As women and people of color climb the political ladder in this country, they are not only running to earn a seat in the Oval Office, but also to prove that women and people of color can be taken seriously as competitors for that seat.
The first woman to run for president was Victoria Woodhull, a stockbroker and publisher, who ran in 1872 on the Equal Rights Party line. Belva Lockwood, the first woman admitted to practice law before the Supreme Court of the United States, ran for president in 1884 and 1888 on the same party line.
Republicans were the first to have a woman’s name placed in nomination at a major party convention. In 1964, Vermont Sen. George Aiken nominated Maine Sen. Margaret Chase Smith for the nation’s highest office.
Democratic Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the African American school teacher from Brooklyn, who earned 152 delegate votes in her 1972 bid for the White House, was a pioneer for both women and people of color. Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 White House bids, assisted by Asian Pacific Americans such as Eddie Wong (Jackson’s 1988 field director), gave a measure of credibility to non-white candidates that continues to help candidates such as Sen. Barack Obama.
Choosing a candidate is a little like buying a car. You can read all the specs about gas mileage and crash test results, but ultimately your brain, heart and pocketbook are all engaged as you get ready to make your choice. Unfortunately, there are people in this country who go beyond issues such as competence, reliability and political stances to oppose candidates based on their race, gender and other immutable characteristics.
Some of these people have formed an anti-Clinton group, whose acronym is a vulgar word used to humiliate women. Others have taken to calling Sen. Obama by his full name, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., in an attempt to link him to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
To his credit, GOP frontrunner Sen. John McCain was quick to denounce a slur against Obama at a recent campaign event, although he also is on record as listening to an unprintable disparagement of Clinton based on her gender and letting it pass.
Asian Pacific Americans, who have suffered from many of the same forms of discrimination, exclusion and indignity as African Americans, should be in the forefront of helping to vaccinate the electorate against racism directed against Obama. Likewise, as women and feminist men, we should not stand for any attacks on Clinton that are based on her gender.
Here are a few things we all can do to assist in this vaccination process:
1. If you hear someone say “Barack Hussein Obama Jr.,” ask them why they aren’t also saying “John Sidney McCain III” or “Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton.”
2. If someone mentions that there are Muslims in Obama’s family, ask why that matters. The First Amendment was written to protect all religions and to protect us from a state religion. Obama is a Christian, but a Jew, Muslim, Hindu or atheist, likewise, should be allowed to run for office. Read the debates that swirled around Sen. John F. Kennedy when he ran as a Catholic for the White House in 1960, and you will get a sense of the types of attacks that are sure to come against Obama if he prevails in the Democratic primary. The bottom line is that there is no religious litmus test for running for president.
3. Another way to rebut the prior question is to ask why anyone should be responsible for the actions of their families. It is Obama who is running for office, not his Kenya-born, Harvard-educated economist father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr.
4. Disagreeing with Sen. Clinton on tax policy or her health care plan is fine. But if you hear someone disparaging her based on her gender, tell them to go to the Web site of the Council of Women World Leaders (womenworldleaders.org) and read about the many women who have led and are leading their nations today.
5. Whenever a comment strikes you as borderline offensive, switch the gender or race of the actors involved in your mind, and see if the comment still makes sense. If not, bigotry is probably involved and deserves a response.
Even if you personally are not a woman or multiracial man, you have a stake in preserving a climate for political discourse that is free of bigotry. Step up to the plate and do your best.
Dear Reader,
Thanks for writing. Unfortunately, I cannot be everywhere and denounce everything that is unfair. That is why I wrote the article. If you think that comment is unfair, I urge you to call, write, or email the press, and mobilize your friends to do the same.
I agree with you that Sen. Clinton’s comment does not seem to go far enough. But, I did not see it and am too busy at the moment to go back and review it.
I will, however, continue to address things I think are unfair either through this column or through other channels. Together, we can reduce the level of bigotry and help to maintain civil discourse in our society.
Thanks again for writing, and keep up the activism!
Phil
Look out for the upcoming column “Obama’s proud to be Americans”. If you’re crying about people making cracks about Obama’s name and having two Islamic dads and registering him as muslim in both the muslim and Catholic schools, and having a father who had a tendency to drink and marry new wives before divorcing his old ones, etc, get used to it.
The press has barely touched the surface on all the stuff on the internet on Obama for months, just search for Obama and see what pops up, and compare it to what you get on McCain. Half the nation would vote for him even if he were the antichrist, but he scares the bejeezus out of a lot of the other half. Very few people dislike McCain, over half of democrats said they liked him in recent poll. If Obama can last until the summer without melting down, he’ll be president, but I predict the Obamanon will fall before then. If Hillary wants to run to win she’ll have to move right just a sliver to the left of McCain, which doesn’t leave much room for error.
Hi Arthur,
Thanks for the feedback. For the first time in 70 years, over a quarter of the electorate has registered as neither Dem nor GOP. I read that as a sign that we cannot continue business as usual in the political sector.
The personal attacks you describe are the reason why Obama’s message is resonating so well, especially with the young. People are fed up with the triangulation strategies of both Dems and Republicans, where only a few “swing states” are in play and candidates appeal to fear and hate instead of community and brotherhood.
Hillary won by appealing to fear in her “3 am phone call” ads, but ultimately I hope that whichever candidate prevails in November will support the types of voting reforms that will finally bring our democracy from the 18th century to the 21st.
Thanks again for your comment.
Phil
Dear Phil Nash:
About your response to “Arthur Hu,” may I interject my singular, personal, “conspiracy”-theory model?
As someone who belatedly, very much so, came upon this AsianWeek “columnist,” and found him more than contradictory AND bewildering in BOTH his online convictions AND his “style,” my belief is that he is NOT a person, but, rather, a “front,” a shill, an online interface for, what else?, those who would fracture and divide “us” and who have no true clue as to who “we” actually are.
As someone, who, through a loving brother who baled physical copies of AsianWeek, which, then, featured admirable columns by Bill Wong and duly reported the comings and goings of “Bay Area” “Asian-Americans,” I first responded to the attacks of the likes of “Christian Simonetti” and the “Eddies” and the “Knights” and pseudonymous “Captain Obvious”es, by er, ah, “kneejerk” reflexes to all those who subscribe to the er, ah “Yellow Peril.”
In which regard, I find the S.F. Hearst Chroncle’s attack on the latterday er, ah, “Fang” dynasty misdeeds and misdemeanors of political and/or socioeconomic and sociocultural stripe less than convincing.
After all, WHY should any APAmerican, much less the coolie “Chinese” types be any different from the William Randolphs. Or the Leland Stanfords, for that matter?
The late, no doubt decent and “sweet” Tom Lantos, and the living and breathing no less decent but still not quite “sweet” Nancy Pelosir, to me, are no less and no more part of said perceived “conspiracy.”
Judging by today’s? “Arthur Hu” adjuration, adjunction ? no doubt, the Beltway powers-that-be are placing their bets on Obama’s Wall Street backers, and already in full cry as per “Hu’s” early-warning outcries.
Going back a bit, my personal askance at your presumed colleague on this website and this “weakly”?, began with his unhip and laughable exercises in reviving the Vietnam War. What, Hanoi Jane? His perceptions, never mind appreciations, of that generation of Americans was as funny as an SNL skit.
Then, to my wonder, he exposited and exposed the day’s “talking points” of “no child left behind” with his zany observations on “Chinese”?, or was it “Vietnamese,” either will do, superiorities in Academia.
Fnazlly, today, yiesterday?, he lays out the Establishment line on Obamamania.
To me, last night’s Diebold recording of “votes,” was less englightening than Obama’s post-”loss” speech, wherein he actually had the balls and the gumption to lump Billary WITH McCain.
This country needs to invest another “war” on the Colombian frontier with Venezuela and Ecuador the way we need another four, eight?, years of Bushitting/neoconning rationalizations of corrupt/inept and absolutely counterproductive juvenmile swaggerings and bullyings 0f the entire planet.
Why the “Democratic Party” fails to listen to the lsikes of George McGovern AND Bill Polk, who actuially steered us through the Cuban missile crisis, I leave to “history.”
And why a “democratic” nation persists in countenacing the genocide of Palestinians is way, way beyond my puny grasp of either reason OR common decenct, never mind fair play.
Today’s Palestine and Venezuela, remember Allende’s Chile, and not forgetting Mossadegh’s “Persia,” will become tomorrow’s “Iraq” and “Afghanistan” (we trained and armed the “Taliban” against the Soviets, and, then, stupidly, followed them, just as we did the French in Vietnam.
Never underestimate the fears and tremblings of the lowest-common denominat0rs.
Which, to me, includes the likes of whomever “Arthur Hu” is or claims to be.
No, Phil, this guy is, at best a dupe, and, at worst, a jackal, running with the perceived alpha pack.
Frank Eng
P.S.: In checking back some AsianWeek online references, I would like to ask Emil how he can diss the Hmong, when they were the victims of the CIA machinations in “the Golden Triangle,” dumped into the urban wastelands of unsuspecting communities and left there to rot and struggle on their own non-English-speaking hopelessnesses.
As for the incredible outpouring of venom and anathema vis-a-vis that sick and juvey “Kenneth Eng,” I ask: how can one idiot and three “guest” “columns” begin to equal three decades of community repoortage?, Fangs notwithstanding.
The “American media” has/have NOT a leg on which to stand whein it comes to betraying its own license AND obligations thereof.
I don’t mind at all their obeisances to the contemporary culture of “infotainment” and/or the surrealities of “virtual” “reality” “shows.
What I mind is their mindless embrace of ALL the valueless values of a society that, as that genius of an English gent was said to have observed, knows all the costs, prices?, extant today, but NONE of the values.
I say, let “Arthur Hu” revisit the war of his homeland, even as I wonder about his progeny, who play ALL the instruments of a family “band,” do they hiphop as well?
But I do NOT wonder at all about his seeming contradictions of syntax and logic, as enrolled oo this website and these “pages,” to date.
As with that magic bullet that killed JFK, and those planes that levelled the Twin Towers 9-11, I insist =–CONSPIRACY, with all caps.
Frank Eng
P.S.: Sir Richard Francis Burt0n, a century and a half ago?, like T.E. Lawrence?, told it like it was , a telling that is even MORE telling today, if only our idiot “leaders” would listen rather than repeat the stupidities of “history.”