Friday, April 11, 2008

When's the last time?

In reference to my criticism of Badtux's post, Badtux asks, "[H]ow many times has Hillary Clinton been pulled over by the cops over the past ten years for Driving While Being A White Woman?"

I have some questions in return, meant in the same general spirit as I assume Badtux's question was asked.

How many times has Obama (or men like him) had to choose between abstinence, an unwanted pregnancy or a back-alley abortion?

How many times has Obama been raped?

How many times has Obama been forced to go to a shelter because his wife was beating him?

How many times has Obama been told to fuck his boss or lose his job?

Black men got the vote in 1870. Women got the vote in 1920.

I don't want to trivialize racism. It's real, it's bad. And what progress we've made has been because black people didn't STFU and suck it up. Don't trivialize sexism; don't tell the women to STFU and suck it up.

5 comments:

  1. Don't trivialize sexism by insinuating that men don't suffer from it too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I tend to think it is generally idiotic to compare oppressions. In a way, I think that sort of idiociy is a big part of what has led to the divide within the Democratic party between Obama and Clinton right now.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Tony: I hope you're being sarcastic.

    DBB: I tend to think it is generally idiotic to compare oppressions.

    Agreed.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The difference is that Obama has *PERSONALLY* been pulled over for Driving While Black, as has every affluent black male of his generation. None of the nasty things you talk about have ever happened to Hillary Clinton, at least not in the past twenty years.

    -BT

    ReplyDelete
  5. Bum: Tony isn't being sarcastic. For example, look at adoption. A single woman who wants to adopt a child generally has no problem doing so. A single man who wants to adopt a child generally can't do so -- he is automatically assumed to be a pedophile and rejected. Similarly, insofar as access to education goes, black boys are far more heavily discriminated against than black girls. Their (mostly black female) teachers do not not find it possible to relate to them in a way conducive to educational progress, and as a result nearly half of black girls go on to post-secondary education, while the number of black boys who go on to post-secondary education was under 10% last time I looked. Etc.

    But as DBB says, it's kinda idiotic to compare oppressions. Especially when both candidates are members of classes which have been historically oppressed in America. Clinton's top campaign staff claiming that she's being discriminated against for being a woman and that Obama is getting a free ride from the press because he's a black male is just a losing proposition. It sounds like whining because the notion that a black man can get a free ride from anything other than a police car in this society simply doesn't hold water, not because there's no discrimination against women. These statements would be useful if she were running against a white male. But she's not. She's running against a black male. So they just seem ludicrous.

    - Badtux the Multicolored Penguin

    ReplyDelete

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