I wrote a response to the Times:
Jan.8, 2008, Dear Times, Even Dr. Phil would probably snicker at the level of pop psychology employed by Gloria Steinem to explain the attraction of many voters to Senator Barack Obama. For example, she believes that the preference for a black male candidate over a white woman by some white males is based upon their admiration for the black male's "masculine" superiority. "Masculine superiority?" All four of the current heavyweight champions are white as well as last year's MVPs of the NBA were white men.
Moreover, Ms. Steinem is a long time critic of black men as a group. She said that the book, The Color Purple, in which one black man commits incest, told "the truth" about black men, the kind of collective blame that's been used against her ethnic group since the time of the Romans."
I also made a reference to her abandonment of a tearful Shirley Chisholm's presidential candidacy after supporting it. If she's so concerned about the political fate of a black woman's presidential bid, why did she desert Ms. Chisholm in favor of the man?
She also said that "Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life." The fact that when white women received the vote, they experienced little of the violence that accompanied black men being awarded the right to vote, fifty years earlier, suggests that some groups, black men, black women, Hispanics, Asian-Americans and American Indians face more restrictions than white women, whose college enrollment is far higher even than that of white men. ( Steinem said that women are never "Front Runners. How many white women senators are there? How many black?) Cecil Brown, author of the bestselling Hey, Dude Where's My Black Studies Department, wrote:
"I grew up in North Carolina, where I often heard my mother and my aunts speak of the racism of white women against them. Their experience is that of millions of black women who were and are discriminated by white women.
In the Bay Area, where I now live, a professor friend told me, recently, that a white female student told him that she found the use of the expression, "white woman" in his lectures offensive, and asked that he not use it.
"Like this student, Ms Steinem avoids the phrase "white woman," because it historicizes their gender. While she lectures to us about black men, white men, and black women, she can only think of her white women as women.
"It's time to take pride in breaking all the barriers," Ms. Steinem ends her remarks. We have to be able to say: "I'm supporting [Hillary] because she'll be a great president and because she is a woman. But do we dare say that we should support her because she is a white woman?"
Our letters were not published, but one written by a black feminist exposed the divide between black and white feminists, one that is rarely aired since white feminists have more access to the media than black ones and in their books report, falsely, a solidarity between them and black women.
Among letter writer Karin Kimbrough's comments:
"As a black woman and a feminist, I find it depressing to see Gloria Steinem set up this tired, false debate as to whether a black man or a white woman is more disadvantaged in national politics.
She cites as evidence that 'black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot.' So what?
My parents (who are Ms. Steinem's age) vividly recall racism in the Deep South, including barriers to voting as well as the barriers to many other supposedly granted rights like eating in restaurants, staying in hotels and using public facilities. These were all rights white women actively enjoyed."
Camille Paglia also weighed in:
"Hillary's disdain for masculinity fits right into the classic feminazi package, which is why Hillary acts on Gloria Steinem like catnip. Steinem's fawning, gaseous New York Times op-ed about her pal Hillary this week speaks volumes about the snobby clubbiness and reactionary sentimentality of the fossilized feminist establishment, which has blessedly fallen off the cultural map in the 21st century. History will judge Steinem and company very severely for their ethically obtuse indifference to the stream of working-class women and female subordinates whom Bill Clinton sexually harassed and abused, enabled by look-the-other-way and trash-the-victims Hillary."
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