Is sexism stronger than racism in America?

Great Debates
1

Continuing the discussion from Was Kamala Harris a below average Democratic Presidential Candidate?:

(There was a related link 17 (!) years ago.)

I started this (to avoid a hijack, and to) to say one data point is the history of our Constituion - where discrimination for voter eligibility on the basis of race was outlawed in 1870, whereas discrimination on the basis of gender was not outlawed until 1920. Indeed, the women’s suffrage movement and the movement for abolition, which had been steadfast political allies in the antebellum period, broke with each other over the exclusion of women from the 15th Amendment.

Anything else that can be pointed to for shedding light on this question?

2

Some thoughts, not cites. All from a US-centric POV, but with some applicability elsewhere. And not an essay; just disjointed ideas.

  • Almost nobody who is a member of a racial minority believes it’s correct that they deserve to be second class (at best) members of their society. Some fraction of women believe they belong protected / oppressed.

  • Few religions (as opposed to individual preachers) directly teach racism. Many directly teach sexism and have it in their formal writings as well as their informal teachings.

  • There is a lot more biological basis for the idea men and women are different in inalienable ways that matter than there is support for the idea that black, white, or Chinese people are different in inalienable ways that matter.

  • If you think of these -isms as a way for low status people of the “better team” (ie. white or men) to clamber atop higher status people of the “worse team” (non-white & women), then a man who practices sexism is climbing above 50% of the population to stand atop their heads while a white who practices racism may be climbing atop only 20 or 30% of the population to stand on their heads. Used to be an even smaller percentage and still is in some areas of the country. As such, for the purposes of illegitimately climbing atop others, sexism gives more bang for the buck than racism does. At least up until the point your race is now <50% of the population.


To me, these things suggest sexism may not be “stronger”, whatever you mean by that word, but I think sexism is going to be harder to eradicate than racism.

3

In the US, I think racism (against black people) is stronger than sexism because racism against black people was socially engineered.

Humans are innately tribalistic. Any difference can be used to signal that someone isn’t one of us and that someone is useless and irrelevant to our tribe at best, or a competitor and threat at worst.

And humans have an inherit misogynistic streak because women’s reproductive systems are more valuable than mens. So men collectively want to ‘domesticate’ women to make them dependent, afraid and brainwashed so men can control their minds and bodies, giving men control of their reproductive systems.

But anti-black racism runs deeper than other forms of racism. America used to be deeply racist against non-anglo saxon whites. If you were Irish, German, French, Polish, Italian, etc you got a lot of prejudice 100 years ago. now those groups get treated pretty well. Latinos are integrating and light skinned latinos and light skinned asians feel comfortable voting alongside white supremacists.

But in order to justify how evil slavery is, we had to create a cultural narrative that black people were designed by an unquestionable, infallible god to be inferior people who deserved to be enslaved. We had to strip them of their humanity to justify how evil slavery is. We never did this to the Irish for example, stripped them of all humanity so we can justify enslaving them.

Also when you mistreat someone, you have a deep seated terror they will fight back. Because society has mistreated black people for so long, there is a deep seated unconscious terror that black people will take revenge for everything that has been done to them.

Plus the ownership class have intentionally stoked anti-black racism to oppose any forms of social redistribution. The new deal was designed to exclude black Americans as much as possible. The reason the US doesn’t have universal health care is that in the 1940s, southern whites were afraid it would lead to integrated hospitals and free health care for undeserving black people. The concept of the black welfare queen in the inner city is a major reason we had welfare cutbacks. Any time the social safety net is expanded, there will be dog whistles about how ‘hard working white people’ will have to pay more in taxes to provide benefits to ‘those people’.

My point being that racism and misogyny are ingrained into humans sadly. But anti-black racism in the US isn’t just an expression of this. It has been culturally engineered for centuries, and as a result is much more ingrained than bigotry against other groups (latinos, asians, LGBT, Irish, Polish, Chinese, etc), and more ingrained than misogyny.

FWIW, second wave feminism was only a few generations ago. And now women earn 50-100% more tertiary degrees than men. Women make up 53% of voters in elections, while men are 47% of voters.

4

By stronger I assume you mean more “ingrained/pervasive”, and not “worse”?

5

They elected a Black man before a white woman. I think that’s a pretty big sign right there.

By running a Black and a woman in Harris, the democratic party pretty much committed political suicide all on their own.

6

Good question! As the OP, I should “know” this, but the original terminology came from @Two_Many_Cats2 and I didn’t change it.

For the purpose of this thread, I would say Dorjan’s former meaning, i.e. “more ingrained/pervasive” given the context of how it was used in the parent thread.

But we could also discuss why racism seems to be more… virulent?!? than sexism.

A very good point that also hearkens back to the parent thread.

In a sense, the question that originated this was to differentiate Harris’s personal issues as a candidate from those of her identity; but this thread is more to tease those two strands apart (which @Jasmine did in the part of their post I omitted, above).

7

Yeah but the US elected a black man after Bush had collapsed the economy and gotten us stuck in a useless war. Harris wasn’t running against that when she ran in 2024. Obama has a massive tailwind that Harris and Hillary Clinton didn’t have. Harris and Hillary Clinton both ran to extend fairly stable and safe democratic presidencies. Obama ran after a republican had collapsed the economy, destroyed our reputation and gotten us stuck in multi trillion dollar useless wars.

Also Harris did get 75 million votes. She lost a few million votes by not being a white man. Had a white man run on the democratic ticket, he probably would’ve gotten 78 million votes. But 75 million Americans were willing to vote for a multiracial woman.

8

I suspect the Venn diagram of sexists and racists in this country has a very large overlap. That said, it seems racism has gotten more out in the open in recent decades, and sexism remains endemic, or just built-in and accepted. People seem to be more comfortable outwardly expressing racist ideas as compared to misogynistic ones, so it’s difficult to say which one is “stronger”. Not saying either is acceptable, but just an observation.

9

For what it’s tangentially worth, race can carry connotations of “lack of loyalty” in a way that gender won’t. People may dislike Hillary Clinton’s gender, for instance, but nobody would doubt her loyalty to the USA. But if a political candidate is Arab, for example, that could lead to huge accusations of disloyalty (Obama wasn’t even really Arab, for instance, yet Republican tried to play up his “Hussein” middle name as much as possible.) Imagine a candidate named Mohammed Anwar Sa’yid or some similar name running for president, it’s a no-go. Same with ethnic-Chinese people trying to get jobs requiring Top Secret clearance - it would raise red flags in people’s minds in a way that a white woman wouldn’t face for her gender alone.

10

The opprobrium belongs to those who rejected her based on her race and/or gender.

A political party that preaches the principle of equality cannot endlessly pander to the bigots.

11

Except that you need the votes of at least a few bigots in order to win, unfortunately. The Democratic Party would be in fine shape if the non-bigot majority in America were so large that they can afford to ignore race and gender when picking candidates, but it isn’t.

12

Do

Do black women have it worse than white women? Yes. There’s your answer.

13

Grand and noble words, but you have to BE in power in order to politically pursue principles of any kind. The Republicans are much better than the Democrats at giving in on things in order to show a unified front and get power, which is ultimately what is needed. Bill Maher has been preaching this for years.

Step One: We need a candidate who can win. Without that, there is no step two.

14

Sadly, the democrats self sabotage.

The democrats have lost massive ground with high school educated whites. At this point, white men without college vote GOP about 75% of the time, white women w/o college vote GOP about 65% of the time. Something like that.

Do you know what massively changes that? if high school educated white people are part of a labor union. That pushes high school educated white people about 20-30 points to the left. Like a high school educated white man who isn’t in a labor union may vote GOP by a 50 point margin, but a high school educated white man who is in a labor union may only vote GOP by a 25 point margin.

However the democratic party is so tepid and terrified of billionaires that they will never push for a massive labor reform movement, even though this would make it far easier for them to win elections in the future.

Labor unions shift their voters preferences to the left, and labor unions provide a lot of funding and free labor for leftist candidates.

Democrats are trying to push plutocrat-lite economic policies because they are dependent on rich donors, even though revitalizing the labor movement would do far more for their electoral chances than anything else.

15

Two_Many_Cats2 checking in here, and yes, I think the term “stronger” is the more apropos word rather than “worse”. for the purposes of this discussion.

I think racism against Black Americans leads to far worse outcomes for individuals affected by it, than sexism does for women. But I also believe that it is more difficult to fight against sexism than it is against racism.

Everyone (at least for appearances sake) is against racism, and more or less agrees that racism exists. But not everyone is against sexism, or even is willing to accept that sexism exists.

There is open talk among Christian fundamentalist circles about repealing the 19th Amendment, and stripping women of their right to vote. There has been no talk, even in the most MAGA of movements of repealing the 15th Amendment to strip minority races of their vote. Of course, to even hint at repeal of the 15th Amendment would cause a public firestorm. Rightfully so.

But there are no firestorms that I can see in reaction to this idea of restricting women’s right to vote. Just some shrugging and hand waving about “It’ll never happen. It’s all just talk by some radical right wingers.” Yeah, that’s what they said about Roe vs Wade.

Because if we speak up stridently, we’re just being Feminazis, right?

It’s harder to fight sexism, because we can’t talk loudly enough without being bitches.

16

100%! This should be printed on stickers and pins and be required flair at all Democratic offices nationwide.

17

I think that racism tends to be more intense, consciously-held and regional, while sexism is more pervasive and more deeply built into the culture. So it depends on what is meant by “stronger”.

18

What white woman would you have selected to replace him?

19

One reason I think racism is (and will be) harder to mitigate than sexism is that most White males have close connections to one (or more) women–wife, daughter, etc. And therefore, a vested interest in women being free from discrimination. It’s much rarer for a White male to have close connections to a member of a racial minority.

20

I think Hilary Clinton’s name was being bandied about at the time.

Yeah, strong candidate. No chance.