Your Whiteness is Showing

An Open Letter to Certain White Women Who Are

Threatening to Withhold Support from Obama in November

By Tim Wise

This is an open letter to those white women who, despite their proclamations of progressivism, and supposedly because of their commitment to feminism, are threatening to withhold support from Barack Obama in November. You know who you are.

I know that it's probably a bad time for this. Your disappointment at the electoral defeat of Senator Hillary Clinton is fresh, the sting is new, and the anger that animates many of you—who rightly point out that the media was often sexist in its treatment of the Senator—is raw, pure and justified.

That said, and despite the awkward timing, I need to ask you a few questions, and I hope you will take them in the spirit of solidarity with which they are genuinely intended. But before the questions, a statement if you don't mind, or indeed, even if (as I suspect), you will mind it quite a bit.

First, for those of you threatening to actually vote for John McCain and to oppose Senator Obama, or to stay home in November and thereby increase the likelihood of McCain winning and Obama losing (despite the fact that the latter's policy platform is virtually identical to Clinton's while the former's clearly is not), all the while claiming to be standing up for women...

For those threatening to vote for John McCain or to stay home and increase the odds of his winning (despite the fact that he once called his wife the c-word in public and is a staunch opponent of reproductive freedom and gender equity initiatives, such as comparable worth legislation) , all the while claiming to be standing up for women...

For those threatening to vote for John McCain or to stay home and help ensure Barack Obama's defeat, as a way to protest what you call Obama's sexism (examples of which you seem to have difficulty coming up with), all the while claiming to be standing up for women...

Your whiteness is showing.

When I say your whiteness is showing this is what I mean: You claim that your opposition to Obama is an act of gender solidarity, in that women (and their male allies) need to stand up for women in the face of the sexist mistreatment of Clinton by the press. On this latter point—the one about the importance of standing up to the media for its often venal misogyny—you couldn't be more correct. As the father of two young girls who will have to contend with the poison of patriarchy all their lives, or at least until such time as that system of oppression is eradicated, I will be the first to join the boycott of, or demonstration on, whatever media outlet you choose to make that point. But on the first part of the above equation—the part where you insist voting against Obama is about gender solidarity—you are, for lack of a better way to put it, completely full of crap. And what's worse is that at some level I suspect you know it. Voting against Senator Obama is not about gender solidarity. It is an act of white racial bonding, and it is grotesque.

If it were gender solidarity you sought, you would by definition join with your black and brown sisters come November, and do what you know good and well they are going to do, in overwhelming numbers, which is vote for Barack Obama. But no. You are threatening to vote not like other women—you know, the ones who aren't white like you and most of your friends—but rather, like white men! Needless to say it is high irony, bordering on the outright farcical, to believe that electorally bonding with white men, so as to elect McCain, is a rational strategy for promoting feminism and challenging patriarchy. You are not thinking and acting as women, but as white people. So here's the first question: What the hell is that about?

And you wonder why women of color have, for so long, thought (by and large) that white so-called feminists were phony as hell? Sister please...

Your threats are not about standing up for women. They are only about standing up for the feelings of white women, and more to the point, the aspirations of one white woman. So don't kid yourself. If you wanted to make a statement about the importance of supporting a woman, you wouldn't need to vote for John McCain, or stay home, thereby producing the same likely result—a defeat for Obama. You could always have said you were going to go out and vote for Cynthia McKinney. After all, she is a woman, running with the Green Party, and she's progressive, and she's a feminist. But that isn't your threat is it? No. You're not threatening to vote for the woman, or even the feminist woman. Rather, you are threatening to vote for the white man, and to reject not only the black man who you feel stole Clinton's birthright, but even the black woman in the race. And I wonder why? Could it be...?

See, I told you your whiteness was showing.

And now for a third question, and this is the biggie, so please take your time with it: How is it that you have managed to hold your nose all these years, just like a lot of us on the left, and vote for Democrats who we knew were horribly inadequate—Kerry, Gore, Clinton, Dukakis, right on down the uninspiring line—and yet, apparently can't bring yourself to vote for Barack Obama? A man who, for all of his shortcomings (and there are several, as with all candidates put up by either of the two major corporate parties) is surely more progressive than any of those just mentioned. And how are we to understand that refusal—this sudden line in the proverbial sand--other than as a racist slap at a black man? You will vote for white men year after year after year—and are threatening to vote for another one just to make a point—but can't bring yourself to vote for a black man, whose political views come much closer to your own, in all likelihood, than do the views of any of the white men you've supported before. How, other than as an act of racism, or perhaps as evidence of political insanity, is one to interpret such a thing?

See, black folks would have sucked it up, like they've had to do forever, and voted for Clinton had it come down to that. Indeed, they were on board the Hillary train early on, convinced that Obama had no chance to win and hoping for change, any change, from the reactionary agenda that has been so prevalent for so long in this culture. They would have supported the white woman—hell, for many black folks, before Obama showed his mettle they were downright excited to do so—but you won't support the black man. And yet you have the audacity to insist that it is you who are the most loyal constituency of the Democratic Party, and the one before whom Party leaders should bow down, and whose feet must be kissed?

Your whiteness is showing.

Look, I couldn't care less about the Party personally. I left the Democrats twenty years ago when they told me that my activism in the Central America solidarity and South African anti-apartheid movements made me a security risk, and that I wouldn't be able to get clearance to be in some parade with Governor Dukakis. Yeah, seriously. But for you to act as though you are the indispensable voters, the most important, the ones whose views should be pandered to, whose every whim should be the basis for Party policy, is not only absurd, it is also racist in that it, a) ignores and treats as irrelevant the much more loyal constituency of black folks, without whom no Democrat would have won anything in the past twenty years (and indeed the racial gap favoring the Democrats among blacks is about six times larger than the gender gap favoring them among white women, relative to white men); and b) demonstrates the mentality of entitlement and superiority that has been long ingrained in us as white folks—so that we believe we have the right to dictate the terms of political engagement, and to determine the outcome, and to get our way, simply because for so long we have done just that.

But that day is done, whether you like it or not, and you are now left with two, and only two choices, so consider them carefully: the first is to stand now in solidarity with your black brothers and sisters and welcome the new day, and help to push it in a truly progressive and feminist and antiracist direction, while the second is to team up with white men to try and block the new day from dawning. Feel free to choose the latter. But if you do, please don't insult your own intelligence, or ours, by insisting that you've done so as a radical political act.

Tim Wise is the author of: White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005). He can be reached at: timjwise@msn. com

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Responses

It was necessary to do a classical recovery intervention on Hillary to bring her down to the  reality that her show was over, revealing her white supremacy arrogance and false pride--and her sisters suffer the same. After some form of detox, they may come down to earth and get behind Obama, but then again, they may decide their brother McCain is still better than that nigger Obama, such is the pervasive power of white supremacy--now you can play psycholinguistic word games if you like, since I have a suspicion you have some lingering desire to protect white women  from recovering from white privilege—and all white women and men enjoy a certain degree of white privilege, from lower to upper class.—Marvin X

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Marvin, the situation described by Tim Wise seems more concretely about white feminist supremacy, more elitist and gender oriented, than that which we used to call white supremacy.—Rudy

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You mean white supremacy is not elitist and gender oriented (white privilege and patriarch power shared by the white woman). After all, Hillary enjoyed all the perks as wife of President Clinton.—Marvin 

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Well, I am not certain she shared everything, for instance, the extra women he bedded. But, yes, I mean "white feminist supremacy" is not the same thing as "white male supremacy" (which uses white women as an excuse or a defense of white racist behavior) are not the same and they do not operate the same, though related. These feminists like Hillary are upper middle and upper class, primarily. The racial ideology of working class white women is not so sophisticated, though some may be followers of Hillary supporters. At times,  the white male supremacists and the white feminist supremacists do support one another. But then other times, they do not. It is this racist dilemma that Tom Wise writes about when white women threaten to support John McCain.

We have been on top of the issue and racial problematic. Take a look at Miriam DeCosta-Willis' Third Wave Feminism. What we have among these white feminists is a revolt against "white supremacy" but then a realignment along race lines. Third wave feminists (womanists), like Melissa Harris-Lacewell point to this kind of reactionary development —Rudy

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It always amazes me how eager some black men are to overlook the fact that white women are the  mothers, wives and daughters of white men: Thus the perennial perpetuators of white supremacy and white privilege and entitlement. If you have ever been involved in the PTA, you  witness up close their relentless and unconsciousnable efforts to continue white dominance and white privilege.

Their paradigm is the same as their average white brothers. Whites on top and everybody else on the bottom. Even more fervent  because it's their little white children's future at stake.  And the fact that Obama—a Black man, no doubt seduced endlessly by white women at his elite institutions—chose to love, honor and marry a black-looking  black woman is going to incur even more of their visceral wrath. It will  be easier to bring thinking white men into  the Obama camp than average white women. And its not  because they  love Hillary so.

By the way, where was Hillary's friend  Marian Wright Edelman during all of this? She knows the woman's core!—Fahizah

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posted 9 June 2008