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Nice post, David.
The comment by John brings up a question that I would really be interested in leaning the answer to (by the way, I really enjoyed the article that John suggested).
Which matters more, race or gender?
This question has been asked throughout the Clinton-Obama race. Would you rather have a female President, or a black President? Does it make any difference in your vote? In the decades since the Civil Rights Act, has the mentality surrounding gender and race truly changed?
Polls that I have read indicate that these are not the first thing that people consider when they are in the voting booth. In
For Obama - young, inexperienced, hope
For
McCain - old, veteran, experienced
With the exception of (potentially) one (the expletive I don’t care to repeat here), none of these words referred to the race or gender of the candidates. Does this mean that race and gender are not deciding factors in the Presidential race?
If this is true, then I am very proud of our country. The issues are what should matter... not the race or gender of the candidate. We should be talking about climate change, energy policy, national security, and economic prosperity for this country. To quote J.T. marsh “I care about who will be a better leader for this country. Race and gender are not a factor.”
I hope that citizens of this country agree with the Marsh perspective. However, despite this hopeful view, I still wonder how much male vs. female, black vs. white will influence the vote today here in
2 comments:
Unfortunately, I disagree on the subject of gender and race being an issue. Obama got a significant portion of th e black vote, and Clinton the female vote. Additionally, I would say Clinton has been the subject of many, generally accepted, gender slurs, while the media has been hyping every racial slur they can find, generally unaccepted.
I would say people have a great dislike towards Clinton. I think it is best described as: Ambitious Women Are Not That Attractive. As a male friend of mine once said. It'll be a while before ambitious women look the same as ambitious men.
I wonder if Obama were a black woman, would he be painted as a weak Suzy homemaker and bleeding heart?
Just want to say that I completely agree with Cassandra's comment.
I really think that strong women have it much harder and that it is really showing in this election.
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