This election has reinforced an important truth about political candidates – that the bar is always lower for unqualified white men than it is for equally unqualified white women or men of color.
I am of course speaking of Donald Trump – and not merely of Trump, but of Rick Perry, Dan Quayle, and a long line of Good Ole Boys and Ivy League frat boys with foot-in-mouth disease, whose style is to speak first, think later – if they bother to think at all.
But let a woman try this approach and she’s a ditz or a bimbo. If she has an acerbic manner – well, she’s a bitch. In Sarah Palin’s case, the unqualified woman was quickly exiled to her porch to imagine her Russian neighbors. In Carly Fiorina’s case, her professional incompetence as HP CEO was an issue, while the male candidate who defrauded many with his fake university and who has declared bankruptcy numerous times gets a free pass.
If you are running for the Presidency while being a person of color, God help you. Every gaffe and error is offered up as proof of your genetic unsuitability for the office. Just ask Ben Carson or Herman Cain. Like Trump, Cain had women problems, but somehow Trump’s three divorces, his womanizing, his misogyny, and his ex-wife’s accusations of rape don’t really matter. Or ask Bobby Jindal, the son of Punjabi immigrants. Although what comes out of both Jindal’s and Trump’s mouths sounds much the same, it’s Jindal who is the buffoon, not Trump.
Yes, a lower bar for white men has always been a feature of American life.
Recently the rightwing commentator Patrick Buchanan wrote a piece for Townhall.com entitled “The Great White Hope.” Buchanan whines that white men are no longer respected as leaders and contributors to society. Now, he sobs, white men are seen only as the fathers of colonialism and slavery. I’m not sure how he can wave away fact as we begin to take a long, hard look in the mirror of history – and Buchanan’s case is overstated – but he writes that much is riding on Trump, a hero to millions of white men angry at the changes in society wrought by now “privileged” brown people and forced to give up their Confederate flags.
Writer Lyz Lenz reminds us that they have always been with us, these angry white men. William Faulkner’s “Abner Snopes” (from “Barn Burning,” 1939) is a beaten-down sharecropper who burns down the barns of wealthy men, and rails at rich whites and poor blacks alike. Snopes is precisely the man Buchanan is talking about – although, truthfully, Snopes would sooner burn down Trump’s tower than vote for him.
In Buchanan’s fairytale America, historical oppressors have now become the victims, the historical victims the new oppressors. Where once a white man could readily find employment because of his skin color or his connections, now that same white man is competing with Asians and Mexicans in a global marketplace. I suppose we could lay some of the blame for this at the feet of the white male titans of Capitalism.
But – no. Blame it on the Mexicans.
Which brings us right back to Trump.
Trump’s campaign has accused Clinton of playing the “gender card.” Leaving aside his remarks on Megan Kelly and others, Trump’s own campaign doesn’t do much to dispel the truth of his misogyny and racism. According to a June 4th piece in the Boston Globe by Matt Viser, Trump pays his male campaign workers a third more than women and only 9% of them are minorities. Clinton, in contrast, pays her staff equally and 33% of them are minorities. Whatever you think of her, this says something about her willingness to be everyone’s president.
This election is really a referendum on White Male privilege. Forget Clinton’s email server. Put aside for a moment her lucrative speeches on Wall Street with their guarded transcripts, and all the revolving doors that have brought the Clinton Foundation a half billion dollars. Trump’s supporters simply hate Hillary Clinton for being smarter, more experienced, and more inclined to level the playing field for women and people of color.
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