Among other things, Barack Obama’s matchup against Hillary Clinton raised important questions about the contrasting ways race and gender function in the post-civil rights, “post-feminist” United States.
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First, the election revealed startling divides within the feminist movement. While women under 40 tended to direct their excitement towards Obama, many older, “second wave” feminists ferociously supported Clinton. As the race progressed, accusations of betrayal, capitulation to the patriarchal status quo, and ascribing to limiting body-politics over true feminists principles were hurled from the pages of newsprint editorials and blogs across the generational and political fault lines.
The primary also battered the tenuous alliance between mainstream white feminists and politically activist women of color, as many black and Latina women were infuriated to see their points of view again rendered tangential distractions to “core” or “true,” women’s issues. Most dismaying for many was the fact that debates about the primary seemed to devolve into an “oppression sweepstakes,” in which Clinton supporters repeatedly emphasized the primacy of gender, while seeming to dismiss the significance of race and racism all together.
There are many other issues arising from this primary that scholars will debate for some time. Views about Clinton’s legacy for women, for example, are widely contradictory. While some held the former first lady to be a true feminist hero, others found her political tactics to be repugnant and anti-feminist at their core. From the beginning, Barack Obama’s candidacy was seen as much more potentially historic and transformative than Hillary Clinton’s. Furthermore, racial innuendoes designed to undermine Obama received much more analysis and condemnation from the press than the often more blatantly sexist rhetoric directed at Clinton. Why this was the case is an open question. We must also ask, To what extent did race help or hinder Obama in the election? Did his gender privilege in fact “override” the racial disadvantages he faced? Is there any truth to the claim that within the realm of politics at least, gender is a more significant hurdle than race?
The 2008 primary was remarkable, historic and triumphal in many ways. But it also led to acrimonious intergenerational and ideological debates among feminists, aggravated the divide between activist women of color and the “mainstream” women’s movement, occasioned a wellspring of black fury towards the Clintons, led to the specter of legions of angry white women declaring they would stay home or vote for McCain before they would support Obama, and unearthed an undercurrent of misogyny among liberal white men, as they, ironically, found their voices as champions of racial justice. Given these realities, the final question we must ask is, how do progressives of all stripes go forward, together, from here?