[Reader-list] Clinton vs. Obama vs. the world

[S. Jabbar]

Leveraging the Power of Race and Gender

by KAVITA NANDINI RAMDAS

[posted online on February 21, 2008]

As the contest for a Democratic presidential nominee enters its final
stages, the feminist dilemma has become palpable and painful. My
inbox has been filled with passionate and provocative pieces from
Katha Pollitt, Frances Kissling, Caroline Kennedy and Feminists for
Peace and Barack Obama, all explaining why they are not supporting
Hillary Clinton. Equally strong commentary in support of Clinton, and
dismissing Obama, has arrived from Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan,
Ellie Smeal and Ellen Malcolm. All decry the misogyny evident in
media coverage of the candidates and grapple--with varying degrees of
success--with race and gender conflict. Clinton fans mention in
passing that Hillary has been an international voice for women's
rights. 

As a feminist whose daily work focuses on the challenges facing women
outside the United States--particularly those living in poverty, in
war zones and under extreme patriarchal control--I think these
conversations have a surreal quality. They are surreal because they
are so perfectly American in their insularity. What is alarmingly
absent from our conversations and arguments, even as they allude to
race and gender, is any sense of how our decisions affect the well-
being of people across the planet--not least the status of women, 51
percent of us, who are being treated with appalling brutality around
the globe. 

There is something profoundly wrong when a conversation about
qualifications to be President of the most powerful nation in the
world ignores the reality facing most of that world's inhabitants.
While American pundits debate whether Clinton is being targeted
unfairly, for example, thousands of women and children in Gaza are
being collectively punished as Israel, a neighboring state and former
occupying power, withholds food, fuel and electricity. Yet who is
talking about that? In the face of such a travesty of human rights
and international law, not one of the presidential candidates,
regardless of race or gender, has the gumption to speak out and say
this is wrong. Not one has said that he or she will not tolerate such
behavior by any ally of the United States.

We live in a world where women are facing an epidemic of rape in
conflicts from Nepal to Chiapas to the Democratic Republic of Congo,
yet neither Clinton nor Obama has seen fit to mention it. Recent
reports of the widespread murder of educated women in Iraq by
religious extremists are adding new horror to an already horrifying
situation but are going almost unreported. Women and children today
form the bulk of the world's refugees and make up the majority of the
world's poor. Despite doing more than two-thirds of the world's
labor, women own only 1 percent of the world's assets. Yet not one
presidential candidate has chosen to highlight the profound threat
that gender inequality is posing to the development, economic
stability and future peace of our world.

At times like these, the practical politics of US elections are
staggeringly oppressive. We are told by the experts that Americans do
not care about, or vote on the basis of, what happens in the rest of
the world. We hear claims that presidential candidates cannot raise
these issues during the race: we just have to trust that they will do
better once they are in office.

That is not good enough. I want to hear from the woman running for
President why being a woman and a mother matters to her and how it
will inform her leadership. I want her to stand up for the millions
of women who are not heard here or around the world. I want her to
chart her course as the wisest, most humane President this country
has ever seen, not to show us how much more macho she can be as our
next Commander in Chief.

Women in the developing world are not reassured when they see
Madeleine Albright standing next to Hillary Clinton. They have not
forgotten that this former Secretary of State, when questioned about
the death of more than 500,000 children as a result of sanctions
against Iraq, responded that the price had been worth it. Most would
prefer a President tough enough to say that Iraqi children matter to
her as much as American children and that she would use the awesome
power of the presidency to ensure the safety and well-being of all
the world's children. Hillary Clinton would not be alone if she chose
to own her power as a skilled and qualified politician and as a
woman. 

There is a rising number of fiercely feminine and feminist leaders
around the globe--people like Michelle Bachelet of Chile, who is
unafraid to be an agnostic single mother in a deeply Catholic
country, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, whose first act as
president was passing legislation against sexual violence. Hillary
has a unique chance to stand alongside them. For her to dance so
gingerly around the question of gender in international affairs is to
miss an extraordinary opportunity to use gender as a platform for
healing the deep wounds left by the previous presidency.

But my high expectations are not limited to Hillary. I have equally
high goals for the man who says he will unite us. Obama has his own
powerful but underutilized tool: race. What prevents him, for
example, from drawing analogies between the plight facing women--many
of whom live in subjugation simply by virtue of their gender--and the
experience of slavery? And why stop there? By owning the question of
race on an international stage, Obama would have an amazing
opportunity to reach out to people worldwide--who are in more need of
hope than most Americans could imagine. Regardless of whether there
are votes in it, this is of profound relevance to all of us in this
country. 

Yet Obama is also missing this chance. What is happening when a truly
multiracial candidate, whose first name means "blessing" in Hebrew
and Arabic and whose middle name is Hussein, feels he must spend his
moral capital proving his Christian credentials? What I want is for
Obama to stand with my husband, a man born and raised in Pakistan,
who now is asked to step aside for a random search each time we board
an airplane. He needs to tell us that he knows only too well that if
he were not a US senator but an ordinary man with a foreign name
going on vacation with his family, this could happen to him. I'd like
to hear from him that when he looks at the United States or the
world, what he sees are not Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Jews or
atheists but simply human beings desperate to be treated with dignity
and respect. 

Like Clinton, Obama, too, can find inspiration and solidarity with a
new generation of global leaders emerging from the shackles of their
minority status. For the first time in Latin American history, for
example, indigenous or mixed-ancestry leaders are holding power as
the head of state in Bolivia and Venezuela. Obama has an unparalleled
opportunity to speak to them from an empathetic perspective. And as
September 11 showed us, our foreign policy is only a short step from
our domestic concerns.

The next President needs the ability to demonstrate the inner courage
and conviction that comes from owning his or her "otherness." As a
woman and a mother, Hillary Clinton could bring insights and
perspectives no other President in US history could have brought to
the negotiating table of war and peace. As the stepson of an
Indonesian Muslim and the son of a Kenyan and a white woman from
Kansas, Barack Obama manifests what it means to be a global citizen.
What is at stake in this election is not merely the historic first
that would be accomplished if either a black man or a woman became
the next US President. What is at stake is the fragile future of our
shared world.