What Is Hillary Implying About Black People?

Shorter Betsy Reed: There's been a lot of sexism directed at Hillary Clinton, but it hasn't come from Barack Obama or his people.  There's been some racism thrown at Barack Obama, and a lot of it has come from Hillary Clinton and her people.  This is discouraging younger feminists from supporting Hillary. 

This isn't one of those critical 'shorters' where you encapsulate the offensive features of a bad argument -- it's a summary of a long, good argument.  Take today's Hillary line, citing an AP press release that she described as showing that "Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me." 

I'm not aware of exit poll data breaking down the Democratic primary electorate into "hard-working" and "lazy" categories.  So an advantage among non-college white people is basically being spun into an advantage among hard-working people.  This only holds if everybody else is disproportionately lazy, which  (1) is flatly wrong, as far as I know, and (2) isn't the sort of thing a Democrat, or anybody else, should be saying.

(Update: And of course, Hillary basically equates the categories 'hard-working American' and 'white American', which makes it explicit.)

Comments

[Scott K]

Agreed with you on that, Neil, though I like the tongue-in-cheek manner that you use better than anything I could come up with myself!

[Nicholas Beaudrot]

Also, what is with this annoying implication that people with college degrees don't need a President (Bill) or aren't hard working (Hillary).

Oy.

[Scott K]

Nicholas, is it because college-educated people have figured out that the best way to maximize happiness is to be lazy and not worry about the presidency?

(kidding, of course!)

[Carl]

No sexism from Obama or his people?

"You challenge the status quo and suddenly the claws come out," Obama said.

I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal,” he told reporters.

He went to a million dollar fundraiser right after David Geffen said, "Not since the Vietnam War has there been this level of disappointment in the behavior of America throughout the world, and I don’t think that another incredibly polarizing figure, no matter how smart she is and no matter how ambitious she is — and God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton? — can bring the country together." As if a first term Senator running for office wasn't ambition, because Lord knows we can't have ambitious women.

How about when Obama said that the most traveled first lady in American history was just having tea? "It's that experience, that understanding, not just of what world leaders I went and talked to in the ambassadors house I had tea with, but understanding the lives of the people like my grandmother who lives in a tiny hut in Africa," Obama, D-Ill., told a crowd of would-be voters in Coralville, Iowa, on Friday.

Or when one of his advisers called her a monster?

[Alex]

Or it could be she misspoke and mangled a sentence? There's an extra working (at the begining of the phrase) and an extra American (in the middle). Go by the idea that she was told to say hard-working instead of working-class, and it looks like someone flubbing a line.

[Corvus9]

Alex, that's possible, but I think that, given the dangerous nature of the subject she is breaching, some more decorum and parsing of her language should and would have been applied if that was the point she was trying to make. The fact that the statement she made is so easy to read as being outrightly racist implies, to me at least, and too a whole lot of other people, that, even if that wasn't the point she was trying to make, she was at least attempting to inch up to it.

Maybe it was just an innocent fuckup, but given the tone of the racial conversation that has emanated from the Clinton corner, I really don't feel like giving the benefit of the doubt on this one.

I think it was race-baiting.

[Corvus9]

Calling someone a monster is sexist? Really?

[drip]

Calling someone a monster is sexist? Only when made by a girl.

[Scott K]

You know, not being at the receiving end of either sexism or racism, I decided not to make my own assumptions about how various comments could be interpreted. So I looked at the exit polls from various primaries. It looks like the support Obama got from female voters has remained constant or increased (PA, where Clinton won, had roughly the same, perhaps slightly greater percentage of women voting for Obama as in many earlier primaries... in NC, Obama won women and in IN it was close to a 50-50 split). On the other hand, African-American support for Clinton has dropped significantly throughout the process. I'm sure that a wonky numbers person could put together more concrete numbers. I'd do it myself, but I'm just a lazy Obama supporter...

[QuakerDave]

If she says "white," it's about race. Period.

[Carl]

Corvus9, yeah, really, it is:

mon·ster (mŏn'stər)
n.
1. An imaginary or legendary creature, such as a centaur or Harpy, that combines parts from various animal or human forms.
2. A creature having a strange or frightening appearance.

Also, really, Sam Power is incapable of sexism?

"You just look at her and think: ergh. But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive," she said.

[Sir Charles]

I didn't realize monsters were exclusively female. Frankenstein always seemed kind of macho to me, but maybe s/he was just overcompensating.

[Scott K]

2. A creature having a strange or frightening appearance.

Let me go on record, then, as saying that Dick Cheney is a monster. Brrr!

[Corvus9]

Well, Carl, I still am finding it completely impossible to figure out how the things you are describing are meant to be taken as sexist, especially the monster bit. While no doubt Sam Power is capable of sexism, as am I, and as are you, I doubt this is an example.

In order for a comment to be sexist, it needs, I think, to be something derogatory in a sense that is culturally coded to one particular gender. Since, whenever I hear the word "monster," my first thought is "Grendel," then "troll," then "orc," then maybe "dragon," but I always feel like that's a category in and of itself. None of these are coded particularly as female, or negatively female. If anything, they represent the dark side of the masculine ideal: ambition, avarice, cruelty. Calling someone greedy or cruel is hardly sexist; calling a woman ambitious is sexist only to the degree it is a double standard.

Regarding frightening appearances, that is obviously applicable to both genders. Indeed, Dick Cheney is, like the Predator, "one ugly motherfucker" (To quote Ah-nold).

And I think when Power says Clinton's deceit is unattractive, that is in the "repellent" sense, not in the "her clothes don't match and pantsuits are totally unflattering" sense. And 'tis true; deceit is really repellant.

[Neil the Ethical Werewolf]

Corvus' account of 'monster' is correct. Sir Charles' snark, as always, is good.

My sense of what is going on in the above quote is that Hillary was trying to make a subtle racist appeal, and then bungled it and ended up making a less subtle racist appeal.

[Matt Weiner]

Or it could be she misspoke and mangled a sentence?

My theory is that she started to say "white working class" and decided "working class" sounded condescending, which is how "hard-working" and "white" wound up in the same sentence.

I still find this somewhat obnoxious for the reasons Nick gave in the previous post, and also think that even if the suggestion that hardworking people tend to be white was unintentionally she should apologize for it (or at least clarify) -- but I don't think that's what she set out to say.