BLACK MAN….WHITE WOMAN

The Democratic candidates who are now vying for America’s vote are Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton.

SENATOR BARACK OBAMA

 

 

SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON

Many voters are still tossing and turning as to whom of these two candidates they will vote for.

Will black men vote for Obama in larger numbers than for Clinton?

Will white men (especially southern white men) vote for Obama because they would rather see a man—ANY MAN—in the White House instead of a woman?

Will black women agonize further over whether to vote for Obama OR for Hillary, only to agonize even more, after this Fall’s federal election  results are counted?

Will the rest of non-black America:   Latino-, Arab-, Native-, Asian-, “Ethnic White” America put aside whatever differences, prejudices or disparaging perceptions they may have against a black candidate to vote for Obama? Will these groups rather have a white woman—by any means necessary—in the White House instead of a black man?

And another question is the following:

For the Democratic nomination, who will reign supreme? Who will get the delegate votes and thereby the nod to be nominated as the final choice for the Democratic Party’s candidate? Most notably, who will be that candidate’s running mate for Vice President?

There is another important aspect that is being lost on millions of Americans—at least those who do not know their American history.

Over 100 years ago this country witnessed a political battle, a jockeying for political position, between three groups of disenfranchised Americans who sought the right to vote, albeit, through different avenues. Those three groups were:  Black women, White women and Black men.

After the abolition of slavery, formerly enslaved black Americans were more than ready to take their place in American society as full human beings, as citizens. The most important way to solidify that harnessing of power was to obtain the vote. Black men were offered the vote with the enactment of the 15TH Amendment. White women were incensed that the sons of former slaves were given the right to vote before white women, so they lobbied for black women to undermine the right of black men to vote, but black women would not side with white women against black men. Black women in their solidarity with black men felt that if anyone was to get the vote first, it should first go to black men. Needless to say, white women were incensed and enraged that white men would have the audacity to give the vote to black men of all people, and they were further angered that black women would not swing their support to the white suffragettes to derail the vote to black men.

Here from my post, “The Origins of Black Feminism”, is how white women showed their true colors when they saw that the vote would not be guaranteed to them because of their gender:

“With the passage of the 15TH Amendment giving black men the right to vote, a distinct woman’s suffrage movement began that spanned through the years from 1890-1920. The activism of black women during the period of Jim Crow segregation points out the courage and vision it took many black women to pursue the right to vote at a time when white men and WHITE WOMEN alike sought to exclude them from it.

Despite the fact that white suffragists never hesitated to discuss how the vote would seal white supremacy, black feminists pressed for alliances with them.

 And white women suffragettes worked against the interests of both black women and black men.

Most notably Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Of particular note was the less than genuine concern for black women and their right to the vote. White women suffragettes launched a vicious campaign that sought to undermine the enfranchisement efforts of black men, by trying to use black women as fodder to get white women the right to vote first.

White suffragettes, like Anthony and Stanton, sought to use black women for their selfish ends, also while denying black women access to the women’s asscociation conventions.

That this was Anthony and Stanton’s strategy became clear when they allied with a millionaire Democrat, George Train, who financed their feminist newspaper, “The Revolution”. Within its pages was venom of the worst kind:

“While the dominant party have with one hand lifted up TWO MILLION BLACK MEN and crowned them with honor and dignity of citizenship,” wrote Anthony, “with the other they have dethroned FIFTHTEEN MILLION WHITE WOMEN—-their own mothers and sisters, their own wives and daughters—and cast them under the heal of the lowest orders of manhood.”

Stanton, ever the gracious lady, took it even further.

She wrote of a black man lynched in Tennessee for allegedly raping a white woman. The point of the story wasn’t the horrific lynching and its injustice, but, that giving black men the right to vote was virtually a licence to rape. “The Republican cry of ‘Manhood Suffrage’ creates an antagonism between black men and all women that will culminate in fearful outrages on womanhood, especially in the southern states,” she ranted.

Another sick aspect of her campaign was the use of class as well as race as a weapon.

In announcing her candidacy for a New York congressional seat in 1866, Stanton introduced the idea that middle-class women (white) should be enfranchised to stave off the poor, the immigrants, AND the blacks. She told her potential constituents:

“In view of the fact that the Freedmen of the South and the millions of foreigners now crowding our shores, most of whom represent neither property, education, nor CIVILIZATION, are all the progress of events to be enfranchised, the best interests of the nation demand that we outweigh this incoming pauperism, ignorance and degradation, with the wealth, education, and refinement of the women of the republic (white women).”

And “educational requirements” of course would eliminate the vast majority of blacks and immigrants, both men and women——including the great Sojourner Truth herself.

Refusing to desert the suffrage cause, black women organized voter’s leagues and clubs. Most notable were the many black women who fought for the rights of all black people, especially the right to vote and the fight to end racial violence against black Americans.”

https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2007/01/02/the-origins-of-black-feminism/

White women abandoned black women in droves after black men were given the right to vote, and white women turned their backs on black women—and men—in more vindictive ways in the decades to come:  lynchings and torture of thousands of black men and the mass gang-rapes of black women by white men. Black men eventually lost the right to vote through savage white racist mob violence between 1865-1877. With the ushering in of rigid humiliating racial segregation, the white man AND the white woman, stood as judge, jury, executioner—and God, over the lives of all black people.

White women in the end got their right to vote with the enactment of the 19TH Amendment in 1920, but this amendment left out black women in the South, where they could not even exercise a right  given to them by federal law. It would not be until over 100 years later with the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that black men AND black women would get the right to vote—back again.

Today, the relationship between black women and white women remains a strained one, due to white supremacy, the denigration of blackness, especially the devaluation and degradation of black women from racist/sexist stereotypes. Black women today are in a position to exercise their rights in ways their black foremothers never would have dreamed of. So the dilemma for some black women on whether to vote for Obama or Clinton makes them feel more put-upon. Should they vote as a woman or as a black person? Only black women have had these questions hurled into their faces as if they were ever in a position to decide between race or gender. For black women, it never was an either/or option; for black women, it has always been about race and gender.

If they vote Obama, many non-black women/people will look at them as only capable of voting “black”; if they vote Clinton, many blacks will look upon them as “traitors” as if black women do not have the right to vote their choice of whom they think is the best candidate for them.

And what of white women?

How will they vote?

Will they vote mainly along gender lines, especially if they have been students of American history, the 15TH Amendment, the 19TH Amendment, the women’s suffragette movement?

Will they rather have in the White House a white woman instead of a black man, at any cost?

Will they look at the candidate’s (Obama, Clinton) credentials and what they bring to the table on what they propose to do concerning the stagnant economy, the deficit, the War in Iraq, the depleting ozone layer and global warming, the immigration debate?

OR.

Will they remember more than 100 years ago, white men gave black men the right to vote first, and fear that maybe a black man should NOT be the first to sit in the White House, and go to the polls in droves to keep Obama out just to see Hillary as the next sitting president?

Many people are saying they want to see a change in America. No more of the old.

On the first Tuesday in November we shall see if all of America—black women, black men, non-whites, white men—and white women—are really ready for a change.

The old guard is on its way out if, but only if all of America truly wants to see that happen this Fall.

Then, we shall see if white women voters can vote for a black man seeing him as a candidate and not as a color.

Then, we shall see if a black woman can vote for whomever she so decides without having to be attacked and disparaged because of what her final choice will be.

Then, we shall see if men–black, white, whatever—will vote for a candidate whom they feel best represents their interests—even if that candidate happens to be a woman.

Then, we shall see if people of other racial/ethnicities will vote for a black candidate just as easily as they have voted for a white male candidate.

On the day after November 4, we will all know how America voted its conscious and we shall see just how much change they really wanted and were willing to put into effect via the ballot box.