Reply #51: It's not a question of value.

[Deep13]

Electing either the first Black man or the first woman would be a significant achievement. My own personal feeling is that sexism is the bigger dragon to slay.

Half of our population is female. Only about 12% is Black. I'm am NOT saying that the concerns of Black Americans are less important. I am only pointing out that arithmatic can in some measure account for the unrepresentation of Black leaders. There is no similar excuse for the underrepresentation of women. Besides, every ethnic minority is also half female. As John Lennon noted in his song, even inside an oppressed minority, women are oppressed by their own people.

It has always been easier in this country to advance racial equality than gender equality. Black males had a Constitutional right to vote in 1870. Women did not have it until 1920. While every major religion has recently renounced racism, sexism is still openly practiced. Across the world, racism is seen as a human rights issue while brutality towards women is seen as matters of cultural and religious differences. The point of all this--and I have to spell out the point since some on this website will deliberately take it out of context--is that those who feel that sexism is the bigger dragon to slay are not without their reasons.