Hillary and her "entitlement" exposed in little known book

During last night’s Democratic debate in Florida, Hillary Clinton repeatedly ignored questions about her ethical lapses, until in exasperation she declared that she had no intention of removing herself as a candidate even if she was indicted for crimes involving illegal use of personal home servers to store classified and Top Secret material, years after she left government service. Why? Because no one would dare indict an all-powerful Clinton for their numerous crimes in the first place, if past history is any example. They merely absorb crime; it doesn’t reflect off of them.  

Of course, deceiving people is par for the course for Hillary Clinton. She tells black audiences that the “new Democrat”-inspired and passed Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 was a “mistake,” primarily because its principle effect was to vastly increase the population of blacks in prison, especially from the “three strikes” rule.  But that’s not what she said in 1996, when called upon to defend the law’s effect on minorities. In fact she vigorously defended it, referring to black males in the inner city not just as “predators” but “super predators,” and she didn’t give a damn what their “story” was (“they all have ‘stories’” she derisively declared), that they had to be brought to “heel.” 

One should never make the mistake of separating Hillary from the scandalous activity of Bill’s administration; one might rightly suspect that Hillary fully supported the revocation of Glass-Steagall and all the financial perfidy it allowed, similar to her infamous Cattlegate “investment” that reaped her a 100-fold profit in less than a year, which most observers now believe was a “laundered” bribe to influence Gov. Clinton.  

But back to the original point. Are white gender politicians and feminists who self-identify with Hillary Clinton for the mere fact of gender really a “friend” to minorities they claim to be, and blacks in particular? The fact that 58 percent of white women voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 should give one pause, but it goes beyond such numbers. Emeka Aniagolu, a native of Nigeria and professor at Ohio Wesleyan University, wrote a book after the 2008 presidential election entitled Co-Whites: How and Why White Women 'Betrayed' the Struggle for Racial Equality in the United States. Although the book is being sold on Amazon, it is at a rather inflated price, maybe to keep people from reading it. I have also found no reviews for it. However, I did find some substantial excerpts from it via Google Books, and since it wasn’t possible to do a cut-and-paste of the text, I had to spend a great deal of time and energy re-transcribing part of the text to a Word document. 

But I’m glad I did it, and I want to share with you what Prof. Anaigolu has written on this touchy subject, which in no small way is further brought to the fore by latest attempt to undue affirmative action forever, and once more the face of which is a white female, Abigail Fisher. Prof. Anaigolu notes that Title IX is in fact an affirmative action program that has benefited almost exclusively white women in both admissions and athletics—thus it escaped the stigma of “race-based” affirmative action. He says

Backed by Title IX’s guarantee of equal access to sports, young women are growing up with a novel sense of their physical power. However, the gender universalism that applied to the benefits of all races, colors and creeds, garnered from the passage of Title IX, does not extend to the gender privilege white women were able to game  for themselves as a result of the African American American-led  Civil Rights Movement ala Affirmative Action.

Thus, the Civil Rights Movement served as a “Trojan Horse” or vehicle with which white women made major inroads into the white-male dominated temple of power and privilege, without significantly altering the over-all racial equation of power and privilege between White America and the rest of non-White America. 

What is being said here in a nutshell is that while civil rights legislation was passed ostensibly to combat racial discrimination, an “army” of white women were hidden inside its black exterior, ready to burst out and take advantage of being treated as a “disadvantaged minority.” Thus the benefits that blacks and other minorities expected to reap in fact went largely to white women—thus the original racial equation did not—and has not—changed as much as conjectured or “feared” by whites. 

John F. Kennedy first used the term “affirmative action” in an executive order in 1961, requiring federal contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” But LBJ would expand its use in 1967 to benefit all women—or so was the “intent.” White women had other ideas, in particular radical feminists and racists. 

Yet, the mere enactment of a statute, while a necessary step in the process of making public policy, is insufficient to guarantee that the political, social, or economic condition the law was written to redress is rectified. The law still requires to be effectively enforced. Moreover, when complaints are leveled against or organizations for contravening the law, the accuser is still required to provide evidence against the accused in order for the authorities to take remedial action. The evidentiary requirements that has to be met, as well as the bureaucratic red-tape associated with filing and prosecuting any given case is often daunting.

What is fascinating is that while blacks and other minority groups are required to prove the intent to discriminate—that is to read minds—white women merely have to point to the numbers, regardless of other variables that may be more pertinent, in order to “prove” discrimination.

As the reader can tell from the foregoing, it was in 1967 that President Lyndon Johnson expanded Executive Order 11246 to include “Affirmative Action requirements to benefit women.” That ostensibly well-meaning expansion had the ironic consequence of providing White America with a legal loophole through which it could take with the left hand what it had presumably given African Americans (and other non-white minorities in the United States) with the right hand, by including white women as a “disadvantaged minority” in the “Affirmative Action” legislation. 

Originally, civil rights programs were enacted to help African Americans become fill citizens of the United States.” But as Marquita Sykes correctly pointed out, Johnson’s 1967 expansion of “Affirmative Action” legislation to include women, ended up disproportionately benefiting white women and short-changing African Americans and other non-white minorities in the United States, forcing them to share with White America—via white women—the small slice of the pie of the “American dream” affirmative action legislation had supposedly set aside for them.

Not only were blacks and other under-represented minorities forced to “share” with already privileged white women who had a step up on because they benefitted from the power and status of being white, but they had to face the wrath of racist white men almost alone:

In addition to this, given that “Affirmative Action” was originally enacted as part of a tableau of civil rights legislation and programs designed to fully enfranchise African Americans (and other non-white Americans) politically and economically in the United States, those legislations and programs had a black face to them. While their stereotypical face or image was black, their benefits were shared with white women. While the stigma, resentment, and angst of white people—especially the working-class, blue-collar white men against affirmative action could stereotypically be directed at African Americans, white women were quietly, steadily garnering the benefits of the selfsame legislation, adding to their white families’ well-being and fortunes, even as white families were already benefitting from the white man’s lion’s share of America’s socioeconomic racial status quo.

Thus

White women had strategically succeeded in double-dipping substantively and legally: First as a result of the disproportionate benefits that systemically accrue to them as “whites” in a white male-dominated racist society, and secondly as women, from being designated a “disadvantaged minority’ in affirmative action legislation. Needless to say that statistical evidence supports the foregoing proposition and analysis….The foregoing empirical outcome of affirmative action legislation, rather than its stereotypical projection, might have been explained away as an unintended consequence, except that white women have historically been in complicity with the racial system of power and privilege created, dominated, and sustained by white men in the United States. They have been willing accomplices—supporters, enablers, and beneficiaries of America’s racial system of power and privilege.

Not only have white women been able to successfully label themselves as “victims” in a racially-polarized society (as Abigail Fisher has), but regardless of what they might say in patronizing tones to disadvantaged minorities, when push comes to shove they will go running back to "daddy." I remember hearing "progressive" radio talk show host Stephanie Miller refer to right-wing and racist commentator Pat Buchanan as her "daddy"; the only reason why that I could think of is that they both share the same "race." Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has run to "daddy" when she needs the “common touch” that Bill Clinton provides in order to “connect” with white “plebians,” thus reclaiming their piece of racial “privilege” and “status”:

Besides, if in the context of the asymmetrical allocation of perceived scarce resources in a money-managed capitalist system, white men possess disproportionate political and economic power, it hardly requires a genius to make the logical and rational deduction of which patriarch has the greater capacity to act as patron. If, as an Igbo saying goes, it is the white man who had and has the ‘yam and the knife,’ it will be to him that the white woman, seeking economic resources and security, would turn as collaborator, ally, partner, patron and benefactor.

A status-maintenance/improvement theory of white women in the United States posits that despite the fact that white women have not historically shared the same level of power as white men in the United States, they have enjoyed disproportionately far greater power and privilege compared to African American men and women, as well as other non-white Americans. The white woman, who is as self-interested as the next person, is eager to maintain if not better her status in American society. (and white women do not want to lose their “customary status” in American society to minorities, who are not their “equals” in the racial hierarchy).

Needless to say that faced with a choice between the two scenarios, white women chose to play both ends of white men and African Americans (and other non-white Americans) against the middle—the strategic position they occupy; and in the process, maximize their strategic political and socioeconomic self-interest, in addition to maintaining, if not advancing their social status as a consequence.

Prof. Anaigolu  writes about how other minority groups have also “piggy-backed” on the black-led civil rights movement, although in the case of non-white Hispanics and Native Americans this is more a matter of the white-dominated media allowing blacks to bully-pulpit the race and discrimination issue. Non-white Hispanics are just as discriminated against as blacks if not more so—and by both whites and blacks—but this prejudice and discrimination has been mostly ignored, labeled merely an “ethnic” rather than a racial issue.

Nevertheless, Prof. Anaigolu is right when he notes that Asian-Americans have not only used civil rights laws for their own benefit without acknowledging it, but have sought to curry favor with whites by mimicking their racism against other minority groups in order to deflect attention away from themselves:

Arguably, other non-white minorities besides African Americans, especially Asian Americans, have employed similar tactics in relation to the African American-led Civil Rights Movement/Coalition. Although negatively affected by white racism, though historically not to the same extent as African Americans, other non-white minorities, especially Asian Americans, have generally played possum…Other non-white minorities, especially Asian Americans, have strategically left that task—the heavy lifting, so to speak, to African Americans. They shy away from public, confrontational, acrimonious, mass protests against white government authorities—especially the police—the so-called “thin-blue line” of law and order, but just as surely, if not just as often, the “not-so-thin-white line” of power and privilege in  American society. African Americans became the face and bloodied heads of that public challenge of white power and privilege in America, while other non-white Americans, especially Asian Americans, piggy-backed on the African American-led civil rights struggle.

Despite the fact that  1.5 million illegal immigrants in this country are Asian, and that Asians are vastly over-represented in colleges and universities, especially with the help of international students and the high tuition payments that schools crave from them, Asian Americans are only too happy have whites ignore these facts and use them to obscure their racism, usually as co-conspirators in the use of “model minority” shibboleths: 

If and when things do not go so well, and African Americans agitating for racial equality incur the reactionary wrath and resentment of white Americans, other non-white Americans, especially Asian Americans, safely withdraw into their customary passive, non-confrontational role, and assume the position of law abiding, non-threatening, “high-achieving,” “Model Minority.” The “Model Minority” stereotype is then employed by the white power establishment to taunt, shame, and/or otherwise explain away the low educational achievement of the targeted members of the other three principal racial/ethnic minority groups in the United States: African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans.

Over the issue of racial and ethnic minorities positioning themselves in the most favorable light relative to the white power structure in the United States, it is not uncommon to find many Asian Americans going the extra mile in mimicking the racist attitudes of white Americans toward African Americans, pretending that there is something inherent in Asian history and/or culture that makes them equally racially averse to or prejudicial towards Africans Americans. (the professor states that Japanese and Korean Americans are the worst offenders, although the Chinese could be added to that list, as well some from India).

After this interlude, Prof. Anaigolu returns to his main subject:

What gives the white woman her status and privilege in America’s racist society is not her gender—the fact that she is a woman, but rather her race—the fact that she is white. Her status and privilege, if not her power, derives from her whiteness in the context the racial system of white supremacy in the United States, nothing more, nothing less. What makes the white woman unique, what sets her apart from other women in American society is not her womanhood, her gender. Rather, it is the color of her skin, her race. 

As an aside, I once exchanged emails with a black female who worked for the Seattle Times who told me that she had attended a female-only function and was asked by a white woman what was worse for her—race or gender; she and the only other black female in the room “shocked” the audience by stating that they considered their race the greater problem for them in society, rather than their gender. 

Since there is very little to be “gained” from being too closely identified with minorities and their problems, especially in the way of social and economic “status”—and it works the other way around as well, as Asian and Hispanic women often seek to achieve “status” by aligning themselves with white men in exchange for the expectation of a certain “favor”—what incentive there is to “self-identify” with the problem of racial discrimination doesn’t go far beyond pure self-interest for white women:

Consequently, in order to preserve her status and privileged position in American society, as a function of white supremacy, she must remain beholden to the racist system of power and privilege in the United States. In a sense, for the white woman in American society, the balancing act between gender and race in the sociopolitical and economic system is as much a moral dilemma as it is a structural conundrum. For so long as the system of white supremacy endures, so long as it is able to perpetuate itself, so long will white women feel obligated to pander to it, if not openly and enthusiastically support and enable it.

Politically and socio-economically, the two issues of gender and race allows white women in American society the ability to, as the saying goes, “hunt with the fox and hide with the hare” and whenever it suits their purposes, to do neither. When she wants more consideration or leeway from the white man, the white woman can claim to be discriminated against, “because she is a woman.” On the other hand, when she wants to threaten or spook white men with the prospect of systemic revolution of racial equality for all (i.e. for non-white people in American society), which ipso facto is tantamount to the overthrow of white supremacy over which the white man presides, the white woman lends her voice, urgent and shrill, if not her weight, to anti-racist protests.

Where were feminists in all of this? Prof. Anaigolu writes that from the very beginning of the “women’s rights” movement in the late 1800s and early 1900s race was indeed an “issue” for the proto-feminists, such as Alice Paul, for whom “The enfranchisement of women” was for her and her collaborators to include only “white women.”

Whatever inherent moral concerns racism posed toward African Americans and other non-whites may or may not have posed, could be set aside until the major objective of the franchise for women (read: White women), was achieved. While the strategy might have made pragmatic political sense, it must not be mistaken for the same thing as the civil rights goal of racial equality/equity for all. To quote Baker (2005) once again in relation to Alice Paul:

“The racial issue was a spoiler, and Paul never impaled suffrage on what she considered the extraneous categories of race and class. Her justification was fully stated in 1913 when she was organizing her pre-inaugural parade: ‘If we have a large number of Negroes in our suffrage procession the prejudice against them is so strong that I believe a large part, if not  majority of white marchers will refuse to participate if Negroes in any number participate.’ She later refused to accommodate black women’s requests for prime speaking time at a post suffrage convention in 1921 and would not meet with a group of sixty black women who requested an interview.”

Early “women’s rights” leaders were usually as racist as white men. Take for instance pro-abortion messiah Margaret Sanger; her support for abortion rights rested on her belief in eugenics and scientific racism. Here is an excerpt from the “bible” of the abortion movement—not from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, but from Sanger’s The Pivot of Civilization:

The lack of balance between the birth-rate of the 'unfit' and the 'fit,' admittedly the greatest present menace to the civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. The example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken, should not be held up for emulation to the mentally and physically fit, and therefore less fertile, parents of the educated and well-to-do classes. On the contrary, the most urgent problem to-day is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective…Possibly drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon American society if it continues complacently to encourage the chance and chaotic breeding that has resulted from our stupid, cruel sentimentalism.

Sanger attempted to employ black church pastors to encourage their parishioners not to “multiply” too much, in the belief that they would be more “receptive” to her racist goals from someone they “trusted.” Today, the organization that Sanger founded, Planned Parenthood, continues to target and “encourage” minority women in their ad campaigns, whether for the same reasons as Sanger or not.

Many white feminists continue to see minorities merely as “competitors” in the societal “victim” game. In 1991, feminist fanatic Eleanor Smeal—currently engaging in a full-frontal assault to “save” the women’s vote from Bernie Sanders—hypocritically whined about the “problem” of “racism against white women” in a story in USA Today. We also saw what white gender fanatics like Harriet Christian thought about Barack Obama: “An inadequate black male.”

Prof. Anaigolu then comes to the problem of Hillary Clinton, who he essentially labels a gender and racial opportunist bar none:

Finally, when she wants to be benign—neither feminist agitator nor a crusader for racial equality and justice for all, or anything else for that matter, she can play the role of femme fatale  for white men. She is therefore, well positioned to strategically manipulate the system to her multiple advantage. In the 2008 Democratic Party primaries, former Senator Hillary Clinton played all three hands available to white women in American society in a spirited bid to win the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. At the early stages of the primary race, when she was the highly favored candidate, in fact, was seen as the inevitable nominee for the Democratic Party, and supposedly had at her disposal a war-chest of $40 million and virtually all the super-delegates cornered, there was not as much as a whimper heard from her about gender bias.

But “change” was on the horizon, and the shallowness of Clinton’s support would soon become manifest:

In fact, former Senator Hillary Clinton was, to a large extent, cashing in on the hefty political check of goodwill and high favorability rating her husband garnered during his two-term presidency, especially among African Americans. Then, out of the deep blue sky or so it seemed, came a young African American Senator, with the unusual name of Barack Obama. An Ivy-League educated lawyer, who is highly articulate, highly charismatic, highly idealistic, and apparently a highly ethical person as well (unlike, say, Hillary); a potent populist and progressive cocktail of positive personal qualities and worldview, which almost always commands mass appeal, if not mass following.

When Clinton’s seemingly “unstoppable” train appeared to be going off the rails,

Re-enter former Senator Hillary Clinton: Act Two, Scene Two. First, she began to complain that the media—especially the audio-visual chronicle—television was biased against her “because she was a woman.” Now, why would a television industry dominated by white men and white women—from their corporate ownership to program hosts, to talk-show hosts to reporters, to contributors, to analysts, to “experts,” etc., prefer an African American man, who it seemed to most people at the time—including his “own” people, African Americans—was no more than a flash in the pan, over a white woman, especially one who belonged to a well-established and politically powerful family like the Clintons?

What to do? From the Clinton camp and her media supporters came a two-fold attack: claim gender bias, and concoct the phony Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy in order to “spook” white voters; the “Clinton News Network” ran with that story 24/7 for weeks before viewers tired of it, Obama made his speech about race relations, and the story went away for good. All of this gave some black voters the impression that the Clintons were making fools of them—and had been for some time:

After a while, when it became apparent that the “blame the media of gender bias” strategy was not proving successful in stemming the steadily rising populist tide of “Obama-mania,” the Clinton Campaign shifted gear and pulled out the “race card.” The reader may recall that African Americans had been one of the most ardent and loyal supporters of former President Bill Clinton. In fact, the African American Nobel Laureate for literature, Toni Morrison, once described President Clinton as the first “African American president.” Rightly or wrongly, and in the opinion of this author more wrongly than rightly, African Americans perceived the former president as a friend, looking out for their interests and as someone in sync with their sensibilities as a race of people.

The legal scholar, Michelle Alexander in her brilliant and path breaking book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, provided irrefutable empirical evidence of the policies President Bill Clinton initiated, supported and/or championed, and the disproportionately negative effects they had on the African American community. 

Alexander noted that Clinton’s policies on crime and welfare was part of the “new Democrat” strategy to attract white voters—especially “swing” and conservative voters—and had the effect of creating a new “underclass”—one well-disguised by the public presence of popular and well-paid athletes and over-representation of blacks in the mainstream media compared to the reality on the street (on the other hand, other minorities, like Hispanics, are far under-represented as to be practically invisible, thus white Americans have only their negative stereotypes in which to judge them). Hillary Clinton’s’ “entitlement” began to creep into the mind as being just another form of “white” entitlement. Meanwhile,

When push-came-to-shove in the 2008 Democratic Party primaries—especially after the Iowa caucus, and it seemed to the Clintons that their formerly loyal sheep-herd was flocking to another Shepherd, they did not hesitate to play the race card. Two instances subtle bust sufficiently racial if not racist in intent, can be cited in support of the foregoing. First, former President Clinton on the campaign trail described the growing support for Senator Obama as “the greatest fairy tale he has ever heard.” What did former President Clinton mean by that statement? Was Obama’s campaign not really taking place? Was he suggesting that Obama’s success up to that point was epiphenomena and would soon dissipate? Was that what he meant? Or was the former president suggesting that given the racist nature of white America, Senator Obama’s campaign was ultimately going nowhere?

Bill Clinton also commented on the fact that “after all, Jesse Jackson also won South Carolina,” suggesting that he won merely because he was “black.” To those who saw Obama as a legitimate alternative to a candidate that they really didn’t like all that much, this was the politics of desperation. The Clintons’ astonishment that the lemmings were not in lock-step behind them was one thing; another thing was the usual Clinton trait of denial and deception:

Of course, the subtle nature of the former president’s innuendo allowed him what in American political jargon is known as “plausible deniability.” And that is what former President Clinton did: He plausibly denied any racist intent. But had the damage already been done? By the time the Democratic Party primaries came up in Ohio, Pennsylvania , West Virginia and Indiana, the Clinton campaign had very nearly perfected its racially coded-messaging to the white working class, lower-income, non-college educated Americans in those states. As successful as it was (for Hillary Clinton won every one of those four Democratic Party primaries in succession), it ultimately proved to be too little, too late. The horse had already left the barn, or if one prefers a modern-day metaphor, the train had already left the station. 

Obama continued to trail among older and working class white voters—mainly because of the color of his skin—and Hillary Clinton tried to take advantage of this divide by creating greater division on racial lines, going from the “champion” of minorities to “remaking herself into the champion of the white working class, and of course, (white) women as such.” This reached its infamous low-point when she referred to “hard-working people—white Americans” in a speech to voters in western Pennsylvania. 

Prof. Anaigolu goes on to note the hypocrisy of many in white America, which chooses to on one hand identify minorities as congenital criminals of the violent sort, yet in the case of anti-affirmative action efforts shows itself desiring to block efforts by those minorities who seek to be productive citizens in this country, all in the name of their own racial “privilege.” The Clintons we know from that earlier paragraph supported the “criminal” definition of minorities as it suited their political purposes, despite the fact they had high-profile black supporters, incomprehensibly even from old hands from the civil rights movement. 

Should we forgive people for having short memories? In 2000, Al Gore found it necessary to run as far away from the Clintons as he could to escape their taint. Yet in 2008, the Clintons’ once more revealed themselves as they truly were, opportunists who believed only in what gave them a personal power and monetary benefit.  While it is true that the fact that Hillary Clinton has been able to escape unscathed from recognition of her natural inclination toward unethical behavior for her own gain has not gone entirely unnoticed—at least not from Sanders supporters—this has not apparently been the case with the people she patronizingly considers her “sheep.”