Women Just Wanted a Woman: Intersectionality in the 2008 Democratic Primary
Posted: 6 Apr 2010
Abstract
In January 2008 feminist activist Gloria Steinem published an op-ed in the New York Times to express her views on the Democratic Primary contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Although she assures readers that she is not advocating for a competition for who has it toughest, she also writes that [g]ender is probably the most restricting force in American life and states that, historically, Black men generally have ascended to positions of powerナ before any woman. Political campaign speeches and media coverage of the Democratic Primary framed the presidential campaigns of Clinton and Obama as an Oppression Olympics in which competing claims were made regarding who has it worse, women or African Americans? In this paper I evaluate discourse surrounding the Democratic Primary through the lens of Intersectionality theory. To what degree does such rhetoric emerge in the discourse of the Democratic Primary? What message does such rhetoric convey regarding the nature of sexist and racist oppression? To answer these questions, I conduct a content and a narrative analysis of campaign speeches, newspaper coverage, and political blog coverage.
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