Posted by
Andrews on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 5:14:10 PM
Recent polls show black women are expected to make up more than a
third of all Democratic voters in South Carolina's primary in five days.
For these women, a unique, and most unexpected dilemma, presents itself:
Should they vote their race, or should they vote their gender?
No other voting bloc in the country faces this choice.
What makes this so interesting is that it completely ignores two other groups facing the same supposed dilemma. White males and black males both also have to choose whether to support their race or their gender*, if they think in those terms.
So, why this oversight?
Well, the answer is simple. To the leftists who think in terms of race/sex there are certain groups which are allowed to have "racial consciousness" or "gender consciousness", and certain groups which are not. For a woman to support another woman because she is a woman is enlightened, but for a man to support another man because he is a man is sexist. Same for black and white. Black solidarity is enlightened, white solidarity is racism.
Of course, I find the whole thing rather tawdry. One should not think of voting in terms of either race or sex. Life decisions should not be based upon such accidents of birth. Yes, to a small degree race or sex can color one's thinking, but only in the most broad way, and even then an individual can easily overcome the general trends of one's race or sex. So to base decisions on race or sex is rather a pointless exercise.
Yet, somehow, the left has turned sexism and racism into something laudable, provided it is practiced by certain select groups. I have yet to understand how that works.
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* Technically gender only applies to grouping nouns as male/female/neuter. Sex refers to the male and female natures of living things. But the left doe snot like the word sex, and has, for reasons unknown replaced it with "gender". By using the word here, I do not endorse this misuse, but simply recognize that it is the accepted usage among those on the left. Although
my favorite site says that this usage has become common enough to be acceptable, I respectfully disagree.
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NOTE (01/22/2008): Best of the Web has no permanent link for the article in question. It will not have a permanent link until tomorrow when it is archived. I will add the link to the article then. Until then I will put a link to the Best of the Web front page.
UPDATED 01/23/2008: I have updated the link for Best of the Web.
UPDATED 01/23/2008Having read over my comments, I suppose I did somewhat misrepresent the (still foolish) subject of the original article. Their point was that there was only one woman and only one black running in the race. So black women would have to choose between Hillary and Obama. (Obviously, black women could never consider voting for a white man in thew world of CNN.)
My example of white and black men doesn't present the same silly problem, as one can vote for someone both black and male or white and male.
Still, my main point is valid. Who in the world thinks "I am a black woman, so I need to vote for either a black or female candidate"?
But, to be fair, I must point out that the conundrum I made up does not exactly mirror the silly one in the original article. So, yes, I did make a silly response to a silly argument, but my main point is still good (and still a lot less offensive than the original racist, sexist article).