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Today's
Stories
March 26, 2008
Sharon Smith
Greed
Pays
March 25, 2008
Ishmael Reed
The
Crazy Rev. Wright
Corey D. B.
Walker
The Politics of Jeremiah Wright
Linn Washington Jr.
Racism in America and Other Uncomfortable Facts
Alan Farago
The Money Launderers: a Picnic for Wall St. Insiders
Vijay Prashad
A Glimmer of Hope From the Gulf Coast
Joshua Frank
A Silver Lining to the Bush Years?
Ralph Nader
How Public Servants Can Help End This War
David Rovics
If I Can't Dance: Why is the Left So Boring?
Peter Morici
America's Banks are Broken
Dave Zirin
Olympic Flames: China's Crackdown in Tibet
David Krieger
The Crisis in Tibet
Website of
the Day
Memorializing Iraq
March 24, 2008
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Blonde
Ambition: Hillary's Berserker Campaign for 2012
Peter Morici
Digging Out of the Recession
Uri Avnery
Two Americas
Wajahat Ali
First of the Mohicans: an Interview with Rep. Keith Ellison
Paul Craig Roberts
Inside the Shell Game
George Ciccariello-Maher
The Coming War on Venezuela
Stephen Lendman
Sami Al-Arian's Long Ordeal
Christopher
Brauchli
Possessing Someone Else's Country
Cat Woods
A Letter to Mom on Obama
Stacey Warde
Tax Burden
Dave Lindorff
The American Dead Hits 4,000, But Who's Counting?
Website of
the Day
Live from the Longest Walk
March 22 /
23, 2008
Ralph Nader
Bush
Blisters the Truth on Iraq
Nicole Colson
Can You Afford to Feed Your Family?
James Petras
The Cost of Unilateral Humanitarian Initiatives
Laura Carlsen
From Bombs to Markets: The Andean Crisis and the Geopolitics
of Trade
Greg Moses
Tolerance and the American Pulpit
Andy Worthington
Torture Stories Dog Guantánamo Trials
Michael Dickinson
Art on Trial
John Ross
Bush's Surge Hits Mosul
Missy Comley Beattie
Killer Economics
David Michael
Green
Happy Anniversary, America!
Ramzy Baroud
The Coming Uncertain War on Iran
Martha Rosenberg
Easter Egg Shells from Hell
Paul Watson
Evolution is Going to the Dogs in the Galapagos
Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's
Raid on Brazil
James Murren
Logging v. Water in Honduras
Jacob Hornberger
Sex and the Immigration Officer
Kathlyn Stone
Ben Heine, Master of the Art of Resistance
Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking New Mexico's History
Kim Nicolini
Class, Gender and Abortion in Communist Romania
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up: What I'm Reading This Week
Poets' Basement
Wilson, Woods, Gibbons and Orloski
Website of
the Weekend
Merci, McCain!
March 21, 2008
Marleen Martin
Land
Behind Bars: the Hidden Casualties of America's "War on
Crime"
Peter Montague
Run
Your Car on Coal? Maybe Not
Saul Landau
Monroe's
Deadly Doctrine
Anis Hamadeh
Merkel in the Knesset
Jacob Hornberger
McCain's Al Qaeda Scare: Slip or Tactic?
Khalil Nakhleh
Al Nakba of 1948: How Long Will It Persist?
Adam Isacson
Colombia, Paramilitary Threats and Assassinations
Kenneth Couesbouc
Money for Nothing
Madis Senner
Will the Feds Underwrite the Stock Market?
Monica Benderman
The Costs of Freedom: What Are You Willing to Pay?
Website of the Day
Stop Foreclosures and Evictions
March 20, 2008
Damien Millet
/
Eric Toussaint
The
Triple Failing of the Big Private Banks
Mike Whitney
Winding
Up Bear
John Ross
What Do We Owe Iraq?
Dave Lindorff
Paying the Piper: the Bodies and Bills are Piling Up
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan on Fire
Jill Nagle
Memo to Sex Workers: Stop Financing Shock Journalism
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Obama and the Psychic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America
Dan La Botz
Obama's Race Speech
Robert Weissman
Alternative Power: Shutting Down the API
Stella Dallas
/
Jennifer Matsui
Apostasy Now! Mamet, Enter Stage Right
Website of the Day
The Angry Monk
March 19, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
A
War of Lies
Robert Fisk
The Little Men and the Inferno
Jeff Taylor
Five Years of War in Iraq
Ed Ruggero
From Pinkville to Iraq: the Dark Anniversary of My Lai
Ron Jacobs
Who'll Stop the Rain?
Christopher
Fons
Obama Takes the Race Bait
Sherwood Ross
In Defense of Rev. Wright
Cynthia McKinney
An Urgent Crisis: Confronting America's Racial Disparities
Joshua Frank
The Kool-Aid That Kills
Robert Weissman
Monsanto's Genetic Food Gamble
Walter Brasch
It's a Welfare State--If You're Rich
Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Women Resist the Occupation
Andrew Wimmer
War Demands Its Due
Website of
the Day
Glimpses of Nature
March 18, 2008
David Price
The
Military "Leveraging" of Cultural Knowledge
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Collapse of American Power
Tim Wise
Of National Lies and Racial America: Jeremiah Wright, Barack
Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth
Patrick Cockburn
One of the Most Disastrous Wars Ever Fought
Conn Hallinan
Afghanistan, a River Running Backward
James T. Phillips
Monsters: Past, Present and Wannabe
Uri Avnery
The Killing in Bethlehem
David Macaray
Could Wal-Mart Revive the Labor Movement?
Marjorie Cohn
Beware an Attack on Iran
Peter Zinn
Obama in New Orleans
Dan La Botz
The Economic Crisis, Labor and the Left
Monica Benderman
Where are We Going?
March 17, 2008
Pam Martens
The
Fed's Wall Street Dilemma
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The US, Iran and the Policy of Dual Containment
Nelson P. Valdés
The Imperial Branding of Simon Bolivar and the Cuban Revolution
Peter Morici
The Corrosive Consequences of the Trade Deficit
Wajahat Ali
Disrobing the Nine: a Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin on the
Supreme Court Since 9/11
Ronnie Cummins
Beyond Progressive Malpractice: Taking Down Big Pharma
Shaun Harkin
Saint Patrick's Day in Fortress America
Ali Khan
No Pardon for Musharraf
Robert Jensen
Beyond Peace
P. Sainath
Oh, What a Lovely Waiver!
Greg Moses
Jeremiah was a Bullhorn
Dr. Susan Block
Advice for Eliot Spitzer
Website of the Day
No Cowboys
March 15 /
16, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
How
to Destroy a Country in Five Years
Mike Whitney
Bearly
Alive: Investment Giant Rushed to ICU by Panicky Fed Chief
Ralph Nader
Of
Laws and Men
Robert Pollin
It's Still the Economy, Stupid
Diane Christian
The Poetics of Perversity: From Boccaccio to Spitzer
Wajahat Ali
Faking the Hood: a Conversation with Ishmael Reed
Tom Wright
/
Therese Saliba
Rachel Corrie's Case for Justice
Alan Farago
Back to Florida: Where Bushtime Began
Greg Moses
Raiding the Family Room in Texas
Michael Hudson
A Grand Global Bargain?
Martha Rosenberg
Why Hillary's Favorite Chicken Company is Eying China
John Goekler
Fourth Generation Warfare in a Fifth Generation Conflict
Uzma Aslam
Khan
A Letter to Barack Obama: Where's the Change, Barack?
Oren Ben-Dor
The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon
David Underhill
Mammon, Morals and the Mobile Tanker Deal
Fred Gardner
The Education of Eliot Spitzer
David Michael
Green
Why Spitzer Should Have Resigned (and Why He Shouldn't Have)
Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, Entombed in Heaven
Gail Dines
It's All About the John: Prostitution and Male Power
David Yearsley
Conducting, Anarchy and the Problem of When to Begin
Chris Clarke
Walking with Zeke: the Luckiest of Dogs
Poets' Basement
Anderson, Lodge & Subiet
Website of
the Day
Deviant Art
March 14, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Watching
the Dollar Die
Don Santina
Vichy
Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons
Tim Rinne
StratCom
Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska
Robert Fantina
In
Torture We Trust
Saul Landau
Letter
to the Presidents-in-Waitings
David Macaray
Common
Myths About Labor Unions
Franklin Lamb
Is
the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon
Michael Neumann
The
One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics
March 13, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Republicans
and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America
Mike Whitney
Meltdown
Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze
Assaf Kfoury
"One-State
or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives
Andy Worthington
Afghan
Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story
Adam Federman
From
Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road
March 12, 2008
Dave Lindorff
Bringing
Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US
R.F. Blader
The
Spitzer Backlash
Yonatan Mendel
How
to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or
"Palestine"
Jonathan Cook
One
State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Fallon
and Gates -- At Least One Cheer
James J. Brittain
Was
the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders
Ron Jacobs
"All
the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"
March 11, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
to End the Subprime Crisis
Ed O'Loughlin
How
Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal
Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering
Commitment' to Inequality
Kathy Christison
One
State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine
China Hand
PRC
Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran
John Joslin
Thank
You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette
Mike Averko
Serb
Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide
Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin
Newsom's Kneejerk Plan
Thierry Paquot
High
Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block
March 10, 2008
Uri Avnery
"Kill
A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza
Col. Dan Smith
Scoring
the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond
R.F. Blader
Why
"Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its
Sheen
Michael Neumann
The
One-State Illusion: More is Less
Bob Fitrakis
and Harvey Wasserman
Did
the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?
James J. Brittain
Anti-Uribe
Protests in Colombia and the World
Missy Comley
Beattie
The
Passion of John McCain
March 8-9,
2008 Weekend Edition
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Only Way to Fight the Clintons
Mike Whitney
Sorting
Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America
Peter Morici
Fed
and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets
Ralph Nader
The
Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore
Jonathan Cook
The
Meaning of Gaza's Shoah
Steve Niva
Behind
the Israeli Escalation in Gaza
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Crisis
over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax
Hervé
Do Alto and Franck Poupeau
Bolivia:
Morales is Checked
Eric Walberg
To
Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to…?
Scott Johnson
City
of A Thousand Foreclosures
Mark Scaramella
James
Brown's Gate
Bill Clinton
President
Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force
Chairman
Poet's Basement
St.
Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson
Website of
the Weekend
Hillary
Blackens Barack
March 7, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face
Robin Blackburn
Question
for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the'Right War'?
Saul Landau
The
Stupid Economy
Binoy Kampmark
When
Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats
Chris Floyd
Crushing
the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire
Andy Worthington
Spanish
Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo
Britons
Will Potter
Before
the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word
March 6, 2008
March 6, 2008
Vincent Navarro
The
Next Failure of Health Reform
Forrest Hylton
High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President
Peter Morici
Why the Dollar is So Cheap
George Ciccariello-Maher
Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats
John Ross
Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars
Jacob Hornberger
No Standing to Lecture on Justice
Paul Watson
Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers
Dan Bacher
Off the Deep End
Website of the Day
A Katrina Reader Online
March 5, 2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader)
Joanne Mariner
After Guantanamo
Fidel Castro
The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa
Christopher
Brauchli
The Turkish Invasions
Steven Sherman
Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left
Dave Lindorff
Busting Bush & Co. in New England
James Murren
Bombing Somalia
Adam Engel
Necropolis Now
Website of Day
Remember Song
March 4, 2008
Wajahat Ali
Mumbo
Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed
William Blum
How Could Hillary Have Known?
Bill Quigley
The Cleansing of New Orleans
Ralph Nader
The Prince Harry Solution
Patrick Irelan
Oil and Health in Venezuela
James J. Brittain
/
R. James Sacouman
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America
Norman Solomon
The War Election
Jacob Hornberger
Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the European Parliament
Mike Averko
Kosovo and the Press
Website of the Day
Tex-Mex Primary
March 3, 2008
Jennifer Loewenstein
Gazan Holocaust
Alan Farago
American Politics and the Faltering Economy
Richard Gott
Colombian Deaths in Ecuador
Wajahat Ali
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup
Poll with John Esposito
Paul Craig Roberts
The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution
Robert Weissman
When Multinationals Say Adieu
Uri Avnery
Good Morning, Hamas
Martha Rosenberg
When Your Meat is a Downer
Eva Liddell
Leave the Next Dance for Bill
Michael Donnelly
Will Ferrell Does Flint
Website of the Day
Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues
March 1 / 2,
2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Race Card
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Political Trial of Don Siegelman
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Nader the Best Antidote to American Imperialism
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba After Fidel
Christopher Brauchli
Meet Mr. Nursultan Nazarbayev: Friend of Bill, George and Dick
Ron Jacobs
Inside the Secret City: Bomb Making at Oak Ridge
John Ross
The New Conquistadores: Spain's Reconquest of Mexico
Robert Fantina
Posturing Over Patriotism: Obama and Those Lapel Pins
Robert Weissman
Hidden in Plain Sight: Human Rights Hypocrisy
Mohammed Omer
Fear in Gaza
Remi Kanazi
Barack Obama and the Politics of Xenophobia
Bob Jackson
Why is Yellowstone Destroying Its Bison Herd?
Richard Rhames
Casual Threats: Loaded with Mercury
Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Awaits the Arrival of the USS Cole
Rannie Amiri
Showboat Diplomacy: US Warships Steam Toward Lebanon
David Michael
Green
The Three Faces of Hillary: the Politics of Flim-Flam
Conn Hallinan
Notes from the Southern Cone
Faheem Hussain
Prince Harry of Afghanistan and the Meaning of Normalcy
Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Gardner and Ford
Website of
the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs (and Deserves) Your Help!
February 29,
2008
Matt Gonzalez
The
Obama Craze
Jonathan Cook
Academic Freedom? Not for Arabs in Israel
Joshua Frank
Obama and Israel
Anthony DiMaggio
The Unilateral Presidency: Signing Statements and the Rollback
of American Law
Linn Washington, Jr.
Cop Abuse in America
Binoy Kampmark
Hubris and Nemesis
Robert Bryce
Energy Efficiency May be a Good Thing, But It Won't Cut Energy
Use
Sonja Karkar
Australia's Government Continues Its Love Affair with Israel
Dave Lindorff
A Manchurian Candidate in the White House? Obama or Bush?
Website of
the Day
Olduvai George
February 28,
2008
Patrick Cockburn
"Iraq"
Falls Apart
Fred Gardner
The Birth of NAFTA
Michael Levitin
The Crisis in Kosovo is Just Beginning
William S.
Lind
The Fake State of Kosovo
David Macaray
A Ray of Hope for Organized Labor
Stephen Fleischman
Nader's Latest Run: Monkey Wrench or Cattle Prod?
George Wuerthner
The Myths of Forest Health: Why Ecological Logging is an Oxymoron
Laura Carlsen
The North American Union Farce
Carl Finamore
Why the Delta-Northwest Deal Hasn't Taken Off
Michael Dickinson
The Day I Bombed the House of Commons
Website of the Day
Plane Stupid
February 27,
2008
David Rosen
Playing
the Race Card: Obama, Love Across the Color Line and Political
Dirty Tricks
Vijay Prashad
Bomber John: McCain and the 100 Year War
Harvey Wasserman
Incident at Turkey Point: Did Florida Go to the Radioactive Brink?
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Shambolic Trials: Pentagon Boss Resigns,
Ex-Prosecutor Joins Defense
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan for Sale: an Interview with Ayesha Siddiqa on Pakistan's
Military Economy
Peter Morici
The Auction-Rate Securities Fiasco: a Drama of Greed and Betrayal
Stephen Philion
Conspiracy Theory, Fears of Betrayal and Today's Anti-War Movement
Michael Donnelly
Obama by Unanimous Decision
Erica Rosenberg /
Janine Blaeloch
After the Land Deals: Will There
be Any Wilderness Left to Protect?
Website of
the Day
Dress Blues
February 26,
2008
Debbie Nathan
Confessions
of a Gitmo Guard
Alan Dershowitz
v. Frank Menetrez
On Finkelstein
Harvey Wasserman
How Ohio Got Nuked
Michael Colby
Ralph Nader vs. the Fundamentalist Liberals
Gary Leupp
Condi vs. Putin on Bullying Belgrade
David Orchard
The New Conquistadors: Canada in Afghanistan
Martha Rosenberg
The Big HRT
Fran Shor
The Electoral Circus and Nader's Sideshow
Serge Halimi
The Dom Perignon Socialist Manifesto: Bernard Henri-Levy's Plan
for the French Left
Global Balkans
Neo-Liberalism and Protectorate States in the Post-Yugoslav Balkans:
an Interview with Tariq Ali
Website of
the Day
Texistentialism
February 25,
2008
Roger Morris
A
Death in Damascus
Anthony DiMaggio
Military
Bases, the Media and the Democrats
Ralph Nader
Why I'm Running
Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Broils
Paul Craig Roberts
Kosovo and the Empire Crazies
Peter Morici
Bernanke's Failing Policies: a Long Recession Looms
Dave Lindorff
General Welch's Whitewash: What We Still Don't Know About That
Minot Nuke Incident
Saul Landau
/
Farrah Hassen
Fanatics, Mountebanks and Drillers: a Bloody Oil Film
Heather Gray
James Orange, Civil Rights Legend
Robert Weitzel
Accomodating Torture
John Halle
Kucinich Goes Down
Website of the Day
Do the Trunk Monkey!
February 23 / 4, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The
Mushrooming Clouds That Hang Over McCain
Paul Craig
Roberts
Obama
and Global Trade
Wajahat Ali
Omissions of the Commission: an Interview with Phillip Shenon
on the 9/11 Commission
Ralph Nader
Neutering the FDA
Jürgen
Vsych
"What Was Ralph Nader Thinking?"
Fidel Castro
Watching the US Presidential Campaign from Havana
Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo
David Macaray
Unions Under Assault
Jeremy Scahill
The Real Story Behind Kosovo's Independence
David Krieger
Stanley Sheinbaum
Caging the Cold War Monster
Ron Jacobs
Building for the Future
Michael Garrity
The Last, Best Hope for the Northern Rockies
Brian McKenna
Higher Ed's "Civic Engagements" Get Dumbed Down
Missy Beattie
Over the Hill with John McCain
Fred Gardner
American College of Physicians Takes Pro-Cannabis Stand (Mostly)
Boris Kagarlitsky
The Growth of the Russian Labor Movement
Mike Ferner
Kick That Barrel
Dan Bacher
On the Trail with the Border Angels
Christopher
Ketcham
Hillary Goes Where Obama Fears to Tread
Poets' Basement
Davies and Buknatski
Website of
the Weekend
Obama
Mariachi
February 22,
2008
Mike Whitney
The
Bonfire of Capital
Jason Hribal
Elephants and the Circus: The Story of Janet
Liaquat Ali Khan
Arresting Musharraf
Joshua Frank
That Obama Glow: the Nuclear Industry's Golden Child
Dave Lindorff
Vicki's John: Ask Not What She Did for Him, Ask What He Did for
Her!
Liliana Segura
When Torture is Old News: McCain's Blonde Diversion
Robert Fantina
Castro, Bush and Cuba: a Fiasco Waiting to Happen?
Yifat Susskind
The ABCs of Death: Bush vs. Africa's Women
Norm Kent
Pushing 60 with Pot
Website of
the Day
Bush Gets Down in Liberia
February 21,
2008
Saul Landau
Fidel
Steps Aside
Elizabeth Schulte
Left Behind, With No End in Sight: America's Long-Term Unemployed
Helen Redmond
Health Care as a Human Right
Benjamin Dangl
Undermining Bolivia
Michael Levitin
Kosovo's Dilemma
Liam Leonard
Fear and Loathing on the Emerald Isle
Patrick Irelan
Land and Food in Venezuela
Linn Cohen-Cole
Poor Ohio: a Second Letter to Hillary on Her Ties to Monsanto
Michael Simmons
Daydream Believer: John Stewart, the Miles Davis of Folk Music
CounterPunch
News Service
A Message from the Women of Okinawa to US GIs
Website of the Day
Cop Abuse in Shreveport
|
March
26, 2008
Clinton and Obama
in Anthropological Perspective
Why
Race and Gender are Separate Issues
By JUSTIN E. H. SMITH
Will there be no end to this tiresome
"national conversation" as to whether a black man trumps
a white woman, or vice versa, on our nation's list of the wronged?
One possible end might arrive, of course, when another white
man is elected in November and American politics returns to business
as usual. In the meantime, I would like to join the conversation,
if only in order to bring to light the inanity of the relevant
comparison, based as it is on a presumption of analogy between
two social groups that are distinguished, conceptually and in
reality, from the dominant group for entirely different reasons:
in the one case, the distinction is based on a relatively short,
500-year history of economic subordination; in the other, it
is a consequence of an evidently universal structural feature
of human societies.
A few disclaimers. First, disciples
of the Robin Morgan-school of feminism will probably fail to
appreciate that the disanalogy between race and gender may be
acknowledged without abandoning one's feminist principles, even
if these principles inform a feminism of a very different stripe:
one that does not seek to justify masculine domination on normative
grounds, but that nonetheless is genuinely concerned to take
it seriously as a deep-rooted, rather than recent and superficial,
phenomenon. Second, I confess I will be doing what, at least
since Simone de Beauvoir, we have been told we must never do:
conflating sex and gender. Of course, "male" and "female"
are not just biological categories. They are also social categories,
and they have vastly different connotations from culture to culture. They
do not always correspond to the biological categories they are
presumed to denote. Thus among the Inuit, social gender is determined
by the soul-name one is given at birth, depending on which ancestor
one is perceived to reincarnate. It is not determined by the
particular set of genitals one has. Yet "male"
and "female" continue to divide up the world dualistically,
for the Inuit as for everyone else, and it stands to reason that
they would not be doing this if human beings reproduced asexually,
through parthenogenesis, from a single and universal variety
of sexless human body.
If we follow Judith Butler and the prevailing dogma of academic
gender studies, the distinction de Beauvoir wanted to make is
anyway untenable: talk of sex reduces in the end to talk of gender,
and we can't but have social gender in mind when we talk about
biological sex. (Whether Butler sees this as holding for spawning
salmon or the stamens and pistils of flowers as well as for human
beings is unclear.) Anyway, Butler's reduction frees
up a materialist, biology-friendly analyst like myself to ignore
the distinction de Beauvoir hoped to make, and to talk of "male"
and "female" as corresponding (more or less) to a certain
reality of the evolutionary history of a wide range of species,
including our own.
But what does all of this have to do with the national conversation
our two leading Democratic candidates have decided to start?
I maintain that the racial divide in American society is both
a more pressing and a more tractable problem than the sexual
one because there is an objective reality onto which talk of
the difference between men and women maps, more or less accurately,
whereas there is nothing, but nothing, of serious objective
interest in the distinction between "races." Talk of
race is based on a bogus and discredited ethnography, whereas
women really are, on average, about 30% smaller than men; women
unlike men are capable of giving live birth; women have a different
average life-span than men, different fertility patterns, different
illnesses. Some researchers, such as Simon Baron-Cohen,
believe they have discovered the neurological basis of certain
behavioral differences between men and women. While discoveries
of this sort are not conclusive, they at least require
serious arguments in response, rather than simple denial.
The differences here listed do not translate into different
intellectual capacities, as they have too often been falsely
interpreted to do. As Katha Pollitt has sharply argued,
even if there are some cognitive differences between men and
women, there is also a persistent ideologically driven tendency
to valorize whichever cognitive abilities happen for the moment
to be associated with the male brain. Men are now thought to
be better able to engage in spatial reasoning, whereas in the
19th century it was verbal ability that was seen as distinctly
masculine. Not surprisingly, as Pollitt notes, the ability to
mentally rotate objects in space is one that has accordingly
gained in prestige.
The particular list of differences may always be changing, but
there are enough real ones to ensure that, always and everywhere,
"male" and "female" will designate different
roles in a social system, to the extent that we remain, at least
for now, a particular social variety of biological entities.
"Black" and "white" are in contrast categories
that really could, as a result of collective consciousness raising,
be made to disappear. Indeed, supposed racial differences already
have been made to disappear as a result of scientific enlightenment
and social change. Throughout 18th-century ethnography, for example, no
one was placed lower on the racial hierarchy than the Scandinavian
Sami (once known as Lapps), and it was widely presumed that all
Scandinavians, as a result of interbreeding with the Sami, were
more squat, swarthy, and brutish than mainland Europeans. As
we know, the racial pseudoscience that would emerge in the 19th
century and be officially adopted by the Nazi regime had a very
different opinion, and even a different perception, of Scandinavians. Closer
to home, not so long ago the Irish were sufficiently detested
in the United States as to come to be perceived as deeply and essentially
(which is to say "racially") different from other "white"
people. Today, the social context that gave rise to this
ethnic prejudice is but a distant memory.
I will not attempt to speculate
here as to how exactly the biological differences between the
sexes listed above translate into masculine domination.
Françoise Heritier proposes that it is not that body mass,
the cycle of gestation, etc., render the woman weaker and thus
prone to subjugation by masculine force, but rather that the
exclusive possession of the childbearing capacity by women makes
men, everywhere, and everywhere unconsciously, jealous. Witness
for example the practice of couvade, widespread in African
societies, in which a husband will simulate labor pains alongside
his wife's very real ones, and will expect that his community
give him as much sympathy and attention as the actual childbearer
gets. This jealousy ensures that men will seek to control the
process of childbearing as much as possible by regulating their
society's kinship system, which is to say by exercising exclusive
authority over who can have sex with whom, when, where, and how.
Domestic violence, the virgin/whore complex, the glass ceiling,
etc., all flow in turn from this control. I neither confirm nor
deny this account, but only acknowledge that, in spite of myths
of Amazons and feminist hopes for the discovery of true matriarchies
(as opposed to systems of matrilineal descent, in which it is
anyway not mothers but uncles who call the shots), the
ethnographic data show consistently that biological sex difference
somehow translates into masculine social domination. Anyone
who does not take these data seriously is being willfully naive,
and certainly is not helping to advance the cause of gender equality.
"Black" and "white"
are categories that have come to appear as real as a result of
a particular, very short 500-year history of economically driven
stratification of social classes that happen (sometimes) to have
different skin pigmentation. (I say sometimes because I can't
help but notice that with a good tan I get darker than Thurgood
Marshall ever was, and thus if skin tone were all that were at
issue, I would be among the victims of the racialized class system
in America, rather than among those who benefit.) "Male"
and "female" are categories that have come not just
to appear but to be real as a result of the emergence of sexual
dimorphism several million years ago, a development useful for
maximizing variability of traits in a population through obligatory
exchange of genetic material.
Now, in a decent, liberal society,
the difference between men and women will not constitute an obstacle
to the pursuit of whatever sort of life any man or woman in that
society would like to create for her- or himself. Yet much more
strongly, in that very same society, there will simply be no
talk of difference between blacks and whites at all, because,
again, there is no difference. If I may venture an audacious
comparison, a horse breeder could choose not to pay attention
to which of her mares and stallions are piebald, which are chestnut,
etc. She could not however afford to ignore which of her horses
are stallions and which are mares. Human society is of course
much more complicated than a horse farm (or at least we may suppose
it is here in order not to get sidetracked), yet both are structured
by sexual difference, and color patterns are objectively as trivial
in the one as in the other.
Again, emphatically, none of
this is to say that a woman would not make a good president,
but only that the prospects for deep social change that a woman's
presidency might bring about are rather more slight than what
we might see in America with a black president. Indeed, Hillary
Clinton's presidency would be not so much an advancement of the
cause of women as a perpetuation of the troglodytic logic of
dynastic rule. Masculine domination is not a local, American
problem, but the original sin of our particular primate lineage,
and one that will not be atoned for in the slightest by the nepotistic,
Bhutto-style appointment of Bill Clinton's wife and proxy. I
fail equally to see any signs of the true advancement of women
in the leadership of Benazir, Megawati, and other borderline
crime-family matriarchs, whose power always flows from the legacy
of a man who came before them and who lurks, alive or dead, behind
the scenes. Hillary Clinton's rise to power would call these
grandes dames to mind much sooner than the leadership of
a dull and modest and self-made politician such as Angela Merkel
or Michelle Bachelet. Indeed, a second Clinton presidency would
be a classic case of a particular big man's tenacious grip on
power, a grip so tight that he manages to circumvent annoying
rules like term limits by symbolically transferring the power
to a close clan member. Anthropologically, a Clinton victory
would be a near perfect echo of the victory of Bush fils
in 2000, except that the absence of the Oedipal element that
makes primogeniture a risky method of maintaining power would
likely ensure even greater uniformity of policy between the two
Clinton eras.
For a long time I insisted
on pointing out to all who would listen, enemy of racial essentialism
that I am, that Obama is not, ethnically, an "African-American,"
in the sense of this term Jesse Jackson had in mind when he coined
it. This term is meant to designate the descendants of slaves
from West Africa, who developed over the centuries a New World
hybrid culture with a distinctive English dialect, distinctive
recipes, music, religion, etc. Obama is in contrast a Kenyan-American,
among other things, and thus from a part of Africa that never
provided slaves to America, and that is as culturally different
and geographical far from Ghana as Ghana is from Portugal. But
then it dawned on me that Obama's ability to assume the same
"racial" (which is to say ethnic) identity as
Jesse Jackson or Frederick Douglass, in fact serves to strengthen
my point about the malleability of our ethnic categories. If
a Kenyan-American may be subsumed into an ethnic community of
descendants of West Africans, then in principle any adoptive
ethnic affiliation is possible. It is only harder for me
(an Anglo-American) to publicly express the same elective affinity
because Americans continue to believe in the pseudoscience of
race as a reality that runs deeper than ethnic identity.
It would in any case be quite
a bit harder for me to, say, choose to run as a woman for
public office as a result of elective affinity, and it would
do nothing to legitimate this choice if I were to point out that
one of my two parents is a woman. Having a black father makes
Obama 50% black (and thus, by America's racist calculations,
100% black), whereas having a female mother does not make me
any more a woman. This point is so obvious it's unlikely that
anyone has ever bothered to make it before, but it is crucial
for driving home the disanalogy. Women live in the same
homes as men, and give birth to both boys and girls. Women
have the same class-based interests to protect --their homes,
their children's futures-- as the men with whom they share their
class identity and their antagonism towards the men and women
on the other side of the tracks. Blacks and whites, in contrast,
not only do not live in the same homes, but rarely even in the
same neighborhoods, and where they do it is a tense coexistence. The
success of one group's children is, as Obama pointed out in his
Philadelphia speech, generally perceived as a zero-sum game that
depends upon the failure of the other group's children. I could
go on and on, describing other points of disanalogy between race
and gender, but I hope it's clear by now.
Eventually, in a post-racial
America, an American's Kenyan descent will no longer appear as
a sufficient reason to group that person with Ghanaian-Americans,
again, any more than the Ghanaian-Americans would be grouped
with the descendants of the Portuguese. But again, for now,
"race" is conflated with ethnicity, and it is enough
for Obama to emerge as an "African-American" leader
that symbolically he appears as one of the people who belong
to the social class in America that continues to suffer from
gross inequality as a result of the legacy of slavery. America
needs such a leader as a crucial step in overcoming the legacy
of slavery, which Obama has rightly described as its specific
"original sin." As Hillary Clinton herself rightly
pointed out, Martin Luther King's grass-roots leadership was
only able to change American society at an official and legal
level as a result of Lyndon Johnson's deigning to legitimate
it. The racial divide in America can never be bridged by community
efforts, and occasional white gestures of conciliation, alone. It
will be bridged, maybe, when the descendants of the slaves have
full and direct access to the apparatus of power. If a Kenyan-American
can stand in as a member of this group, for now, as a first step,
this is surely a step in the right direction.
A post-gender America, in contrast,
is a science-fiction biotech utopia that I hope I won't live
to see. I'll repeat one last time that this does not mean
that a woman president would not be a good thing, but only that
she would do nothing to remedy our distinctly American original
sin. Given the racially charged dirty campaigning we've seen
from the Clintons so far, it is safe to say that if that particular
woman president turns out to be Hillary Clinton, the fallout
of this original sin will get worse before it gets better.
Justin Smith teaches philosophy in Canada. He can
be reached at: jehsmith@gmail.com
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