Letter from Juanita Johnson-Bailey (POWERFUL!)

[susankh4]

Ms. Johnson-Baily tells us "I have been called a Mammy so much over these last few weeks as I've voiced my support for Senator Clinton that I have started sending out this response to my Black girlfriends who call me a race traitor." Here's the letter:


Mammy or Conscious Black Woman?

I do question Black women who think of me as a race traitor for being a Clinton supporter, especially those who can’t discuss either candidate’s platform. I wonder how they can blindly choose race loyalty over their racial and gender interests. Here are my thoughts.

I don't feel like a Mammy to Senator Clinton, as Melissa Harris-Lacewell of Princeton claimed in her op ed piece, Mammy Goes to Washington, of Black women who support Clinton. What I am is the invisible unheard Black woman voter who is trampled in the media dash to simplify racial politics. I can't give my loyalty to any person who takes my vote for granted and won’t bring me and my issues out in the light of day. Here are my thoughts.

1. Senator Clinton is not new to me or to Blacks. She worked with Marian Wright Eldeman back in the 70s for children's rights (esp. Black children). She was involved in the inception of One America, The President's Commission on Race headed by John Hope Franklin.

2. Senator Clinton has been in the fight to open the doors for more women and Blacks. Senator Clinton has a Black woman campaign manager. She campaigned for Obama when he 1st ran for Senate. She still keeps a picture of Obama and his family from that campaign on her desk. Her office was the 1st place that Senator Obama visited when he was newly elected. He thought so highly of her that he asked her to be his mentor. She mentored him during his first year in the Senate.

3. Unlike most other First ladies who were just attached, Senator Clinton had an office in the West Wing and has actually worked on initiatives for people of color and women. She has traveled the world representing the U.S. and actually broken bread with international dignitaries like Bhutto.

4. Clinton has also disagreed with her spouse. She supported gays in the military, no questions asked. I’m clear that I’m not electing Bill Clinton. I’m clear that Senator Clinton does not get all of my issues. But I’m also clear that she is not ignoring them and taking me for granted in an effort to appease the masses.

5. Senator Clinton has spoken out on race, while Senator Obama said has tried to ingratiate himself to those who believe in the power of a colorblind society. Obama has said that class was more in play than race in the Jena 6 incidents; he has said that Blacks are 90% on the way to equality; and Obama has said that the federal government’s incompetence during Katrina was colorblind.

A Black man who believes such things may share the dailiness of being Black in America with me, but he and I have certainly interpreted these experiences differently. A Black man who believes such things can not take my support for granted. I can not give him a pass on these issues because of the color of his skin.

6. Black women colleagues, professors, have given me their singular reasons for voting for Obama. They have stated respectively: I’m voting for him because he’s Black; I’m voting for him because I want to see Michelle Obama as the 1st lady; I’m voting for him because I don’t like the way the Clintons have criticized him; I’m voting for Obama because she’s too intense, too serious; I’m voting for him because he’s a good speaker and excites the crowd; I’m voting against her because she cried, a White woman’s tactic to get her way. Surely there are good reasons to vote for Obama. The ones listed are not among them.

7. My White colleagues who serve with me on diversity committees have reasoned their Obama vote thusly: he’s the 1st national Black leader/politician that doesn’t make me feel guilty; Obama sees beyond race and has gone beyond race; voting for Obama absolves me of my last vestiges of White guilt. I find these reasons for choosing heartwarming easily digestible Blackness offensive.

8. I ask the question that Tavis Smiley asked Senator Kennedy, "Why is it that all these powerful White men have lined up behind Obama and most of the Black Caucus is lined up behind Senator Clinton?"

9. I ask further, "Do powerful White men come bearing gifts wanting nothing in return?" The Kennedy that I most respect because he has been in the trenches is Robert Kennedy's son, who is supporting Senator Clinton and worked for her in CA. But that didn't make the news either.

10. I think we as Black people are too uncritical of our own. We are so desperate to see a good Black man we can believe in after the likes of O J, Uncle Clarence, and Marion Barry. Yes Obama is squeaky clean, but only a few years on the national scene and he's ready to go?

11. I don't buy the Kennedy comparison. Obama is no President Kennedy -- who by the way had many more years on the national scene when he decided to run. And I remember the real Kennedy who was pulled kicking and screaming into Civil Rights by Martin Luther King, Jr., not the Kennedy of the myth. I also remember the Southern, flawed, Johnson who had the political clout to twist arms to make Civil Rights a reality. But Johnson only did so because he had no choice, because King was a master strategist, and because even Johnson believed the time had come. I lived this history and won’t have it reinterpreted for me.

In closing, I feel like a woman who has been where Clinton has been, abandoned by women who in their heart of hearts, can't quite live their self-love because they were so socialized into loving and caring for everyone else before themselves, especially men. And I’ve been someplace that Senator Clinton has not been. I’ve been called names, especially by my Sistahs, who feel like I’m choosing a White woman over a Black man. I love Black men. I have loved the same one for 37 years. And I'm not afraid of Black men with power. I also live with this same Black man who has power, a CEO. If this were not a time of crisis and 10 years down the road, I might consider the Obama band wagon, but not today.

I don’t feel like a Black woman who is choosing gender over race. I feel like a Black woman with an awareness of just how much gender matters. I still know that women make 71 cents to the $1.00 that men make when we have the same education and experience and that we make even less if we’re Black women. I know that it is women who are raped, assaulted, and not equally protected by the courts in the workplace and regarding domestic matters. I know that it is women’s pain that the press exploits and it is women who the press derides if we are too powerful and out of our place.

No debate, the Clinton camp has made steps that have been scrutinized and over-analyzed and interpreted and they have not been given the benefit of the doubt-- something they mistakenly believed that they had earned from the Black community. Yes I see the racism, unintentional or not, in some of the things said by Clinton supporters during this primary season. But I can also see the hidden codes coming from the other side too. I see codes that play on my Black pain and oppression. Oprah used hidden codes to play on our pain when she asked, "Where would I be if I had listened to people (Whites) when they told me that it was not my time/turn?” I won’t apply TV mis/standards or Oprah’s life experience to mine. I like to compare apples with apples. If I remember correctly people said the same of John Edwards his first time out -- that he was not ready and that it was not his time and it was not considered racist, just a critique.

In these times of crisis, I choose experience over inspiration. Nobody wants red states and blue states; everybody wants hope; but I want that and more. It's like a choice between the high school girl who is the class good girl, the valedictorian, the person who has worked so hard for the class over four years of high school. She's done most things right. And then a new boy moves to town. He looks good, he's popular, he has less baggage, and he speaks better. He says appealing things. She gives too much detail and she is sort of boring. What the heck? Let's vote for him.

Well I've been in this situation in the workplace -- passed over by less qualified men, Black and White, perceived as more personable. And there were so many good reasons -- she seems radical, she talks too much, she seems mean, people don't really like her, she’s probably a feminist, and she's a “B”. Sound familiar? And even though it is now packaged differently, I still recognize it and it hurts me as a woman.

I don't feel like a Mammy to Senator Clinton. If you want to talk female stereotypes, I don’t want be a mistress to Obama -- never mentioned, but taken for granted. I feel that I am making an informed choice. I choose the mentor over the protégé. I choose to be an empowered, conscious, and informed modern Black woman, not one who is having her pain played on by people who have not demonstrated that they hear me or value me – just people who want my vote and expect it or else.

Juanita Johnson-Bailey
Black Woman, Professor & Clinton Supporter