Every time I come to mydd I see at least one diary complaining about sexism. Hillary is a woman, the argument goes. And Hillary lost. Ergo, Hillary must have lost because she's a woman. While I would argue that there were several excellent reasons to oppose Hillary, I still agree that it's inevitable that any woman running for the presidency would have been faced with sexism. However considering that Hillary was white and her main opponent was African American, the argument that she was the one discriminated against flies out the window.
A few facts below:
Blacks are 12% of America. Women are 50% of America. And yet blacks are only 1% of the senate, and women are only 16% of the senate, which shows that both racism and sexism are huge barriers. But while women have achieved 32% of proportional representation (i.e. 16/50), blacks have achieved only 8.3% of proportional representation (1/12). What this means is that relative to their population, women have nearly FOUR TIMES as much political power as blacks.
Now lets look at wealth. Women were only 12.75% of the people on Forbes 2004 ranking of the 400 richest Americans. Since they are 50% of the population, that means they only achieved 25.5% (12.75/50) of their proportional representation among the economic elite. By contrast blacks were only 0.25% of America's 400 richest, and since they're 12% of the population, they achieved only 2.08% of their proportional representation. So when it comes to economic power, relative to their population, women have TWELVE TIMES the representation among well to do Americans as blacks have.
So while American women are dramatically underrepresented in positions of power and wealth compared to men, they are still nowhere near as oppressed as African Americans. And I didn't even go into all the statistics showing women have longer lives and spend much less time in jail than blacks do.
So enough with all the whining about sexism. Hillary had to deal with sexism, Obama had to deal with both racism and (because of his name) Islamophobia. McCain has to deal with ageism, and Kucinich had to deal with heightism. Yet it's always Hillary and her supporters that monopolize the victim card, which is a pretty unattractive trait for a woman lucky enough to spend 8 years in the white house.
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