A crisis for women…again.

I’ve not mentioned very much about this campaign but at this point, when the party is over and the strobe lights have just stopped flashing (this is when you wish you’d WAITED to give your number to the strobe light cute boy who is now not cute at all) Hilary Clinton is still there. Yes, I know this club joke about her has been made before (I believe it was Chris Rock) but it’s funny and not for me, a black woman.

This is a familiar episode of “Which Side of The Fence Do You Hang?” for us black women. If you can recall about a hundred plus years ago, some time after being told we were “free” but unable to vote, like our vanilla sistren and chocolate brethern (save for Wyoming - you progressive state you - which allowed women (not black) to cast their vote and hold office and dig dirt just like her man), we all decided to figure out a way to actually get some of the accessories that go with the freedom we were told we had. Several movements popped up forcing black women to choose race over gender or gender over race. Fast forward in the story: we were NOT included in the victory for white women’s voting rights. So we’re clear.

This is not a new revelation. There’s a very good article from March of 2008 in the Washington Post by DeNeen Brown, written soon after Gloria Steinem (she reminds me of a very smart little kindergartner they used to call “Hard Head” because of her will - that was me - except I’m black and know what that entails) basically said that gender is “the most restrictive force in America.” I wonder if she watches “Cops.”

Brown talks to NOW President Kim Gandy who sort of tries to explain why we are all still confused and pissed. Basically because racism, sexism, broke-ism, rich-ism and all other ill isms still exist today. I know tons of black women supporting HIlary and a whole bunch of white people supporting Obama. The point of all this is not to sway but to have everybody pull back from their lens for a second and see a bigger picture.

We are going down a road we went down already.

There was a deep diss that happened back during the suffrage movement. It is likened to white women back then who were fighting for voting rights telling black women to come along for the ride and then not showing up for the second date. You’d be a little mad too. This time around was probably a great time to repair that snafu that our ancestors went through but what seems to be happening is those supporters around both candidates are choosing to fight a harder fight with each other than the candidates.

Without going into a history lesson, here’s my final observation: because of what happened back then, Hilary’s refusal to read the graffiti on the wall is kind of doing a retroactive push for the solidarity of women. She fought a really good campaign, except now she’s in her third joke (that last joke that just makes the first two moot points) and what people are noticing is not that she is a fighter, but that she is a poor judge of when it’s time to move on. This is really not a game of checkers, seeing how many states you can collect, if you aren’t going to win the game. It’s called poor sportsmanship. If we’re going to rehash all these difficult political emotions, at least let it before a a good cause. At this point, it’s just making for a bad television show ending (ahem - Sopranos).

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