"It's great to have the first African-American and the first Woman running for the highest office in the land!"
—Hilary Clinton
The one thing I truly despise about Hilary Clinton—besides conflating her marriage to a former president and former governor as her own personal work experience—is that every chance she gets, she refers to herself as the "first woman to run for president".
How arrogant. How condescending. How culturally elitist.
Apparently Clinton who like me is from Illinois doesn't remember former Illinois senator Carol Moseley Braun. Not only was Braun the first Black Woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate, but she also became only the 2nd woman to run for president (and have a serious shot at winning) in 2004.
Apparently Clinton's never heard of Braun's historic predecessor the legendary Shirley Chisholm who—after becoming the first black woman congresswoman ever, decided to run for president of the U.S. in 1972.
Chisholm introduced groundbreaking legislation to establish publicly supported daycare centers and to expand unemployment insurance to cover domestic workers. She was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, holding it accountable as “the conscience of Congress.”
Now it's not just that Hilary and Bill Clinton never publicly acknowledge Braun or Chisholm, it's that they spend so much time pushing her campaign as some sort of milestone for women; the same way Nancy Pelosi decided that her success was glass-ceiling breaker for "women".
It also makes you wonder that if Hilary sees herself and white women as being "women," how sincere is she gonna be about issues affecting women of color? Just look at how the feminist movement has cut out women of color only mentioning black hispanic and asian women when it furthers the cause of elitist white women.
Hilary Clinton has shown herself to be no different that the elitist feminists (a redundant term actually) that she courts.
Mean while, here's a little more on the honorable Shirley Chisholm.
“… Prejudice and hatred built the nation’s slums, maintains them and profits by them…. Unless we start to fight and defeat the enemies in our own country, poverty and racism, and make our talk of equality and opportunity ring true, we are exposed in the eyes of the world as hypocrites when we talk about making people free.”—Shirley Chisholm, First Black Congresswoman, 1924-2005
“Fighting Shirley Chisholm — Unbought and Unbossed” was her campaign slogan for New York’s Twelfth Congressional District race in 1968. Chisholm won — and stayed true to her words throughout her political career. She opposed the Vietnam War and weapons development at a time when it was unpopular to do so, and relentlessly fought for the rights of women, children, minorities, and the poor.
In 1972, Chisholm announced her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination, the first African American woman to do so. Although she didn’t receive the nomination, she won 28 delegates and gathered 152 votes at the Democratic National Convention.
Before entering politics, Chisholm was a nursery school teacher, daycare center director, and a consultant for the New York Department of Social Services, where she became well acquainted with the struggles of the poor and disenfranchised. The daughter of immigrant parents from Barbados and Guyana, she grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and remained passionately committed to her constituency. She chronicled her political career in two autobiographical books, Unbought and Unbossed (1970) and The Good Fight (1973).
Chisholm continued her advocacy after she retired from Congress in 1983, going on to found the National Political Congress of Black Women, teaching at Mt. Holyoke and Spellman colleges, and lecturing around the nation. At every turn, she invited others to join her in fighting for a more just society. “We need men and women…who will dare to declare that they are free of the old ways that have led us wrong, and who owe nothing to the traditional concentrations of capital and power that have subverted this nation’s ideals.”
Here's a young woman delivering a famous speech from Shirley Chisholm... Word for word Chisholm was superbad.
