The other day at work, Thing One had an ancient coworker (on a construction site) drop the N-word. This was clearly a test to see if the young kid was "woke," which is to say, "not a racist fuck."
I'm not a fan of speech codes or many of the neologisms that have been created to try and grapple with the very real legacy of racism and sexism in the world. The "decolonizer" thing gets a hard eye-roll from me. But it is also clear that things that used to be normal are no underground and nearly taboo.
Paul Campos writes about a woman whom Nixon wanted to elevate to the Supreme Court. She was likely sunk by chauvinism. Warren Berger threatened to resign if Mildred Lillie were appointed to the Court. Thurgood Marshall had been on the Court for four years at that point, but a woman was a bridge too far.
Some of this has come up with people relitigating the 2016 election on Twitter. The argument goes something like this:
"We told you that the 2016 election was a critical election and all you idiots who voted for Jill Stein and stayed home are responsible for Roe being overturned and America's descent in theocracy."
"Not my fault that the Dumbocrats nominated the most unpopular nominee in history."
Was Clinton unpopular? Yes, she was. About as unpopular as Trump, but very unpopular. Her favorable ratings were in the high 30s, which is really bad. But it's more complicated than that.
When she was Secretary of State and before she declared for the presidency, Clinton's favorable rating peaked at 66%. Her previous stint under 50% was when she ran for president in 2008 and when she ran for the Senate in 2000. In other words, Hillary Clinton was, in fact, popular when she was "doing the job" but not when she "asked for a better job." She was an impactful First Lady, a very good Senator and a very good Secretary of State. She become unpopular as a candidate. A lot of this was framed as her being a bad politician, but that's kind of a causal loop. She lost, so she's a bad politician and she's a bad politician because she lost.
There's some research that people like women doing important work, but they really don't like it when women ask for promotions or a better job. They prize competency in women, but not ambition.
Because women, Black people and other historically disadvantaged groups have made real progress in recent years, it's been tempting for people to talk about how we've "moved past" our former sins. That was a big line when Obama was elected, "America's no longer racist because we have a Black friend!" But we haven't even gotten that far with women. In fact, women have always trailed behind Black men when it has come to their elevation. Black men got the vote before women (though that right was fragile), a Black man was a Supreme Court justice and President before a woman.
It's striking to me that the highest position a woman has risen to in America is Speaker of the House. Becoming Speaker is about personal relationships between rival factions. It's about herding cats. It's about competency. Nancy Pelosi doesn't need to be "popular" with the old fucker who dropped the N-word in front of my son. Neither, for that matter, did Margaret Thatcher or Teresa May.
The Glass Ceiling still exists, and I just don't know what it will take to break it.
No comments:
Post a Comment