Divide and Conquer

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Wednesday March 12, 2008 · 11:52 PM PDT

2008/03/12 · 23:52

Am I missing something? Haven’t gender and race (among a myriad of other factors such as sexuality and religion) always played a role in the US election? Is that not why every US President so far has been a white, heterosexual male? Isn’t it the case that now we are simply able to talk about and imagine a different gender or a different race in the White House?

Have there not been incredibly disastrous white, heterosexual male Presidents (I ask that tongue-in-cheek)? Did they somehow manage to ruin it for every other white, heterosexual male who wanted to run for President? Why are Clinton and Obama representative of whole populations who are assumed to be exactly like these two candidates simply because they look like them?

I am completely confused about why people are saying that gender and race are a factor in this election as if that has never been the case before in the annals of US history. Do whiteness and maleness not count as a race and a gender, respectively? Why not? Isn’t that part of the problem? Whiteness and maleness remain unmarked and so assume the mantle of universal humanity. Shouldn’t we have been asking why is it given the US’s incredible diversity that our choices are most often disproportionately between white, heterosexual males. Now that’s affirmative action.

I do not fathom why public discourse about this election assumes that gender and race are an issue for the first time. Why were gender and race not issues when almost every presidential election in US history had 2 white, heterosexual male candidates? Gender is not a “woman’s” problem. It is the problem of men. Race is not “black” people’s problem. It is white people’s problem. Women’s “issues” and African-American “issues” are everyone’s issues.

As we talk about the “black” candidate and the “woman” candidate a man named McCain is painting himself as an American (and we all know that this is questionable; Republicans have quite a bit of explaining to do about their concerted anti-Americanism). In this election, it is those quintessential Republican white, heterosexual males with their sense of entitlement who are sitting back and laughing while the Democratic Party eats itself.

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