Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/10/27/the-yale-record-does-not-endor.html
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The glass ceiling won’t be shattered for once and for all when she’s elected, just like systemic racism didn’t up and disappear when Obama was elected.
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I’m kind of down on milestones. I remember when the first woman won a Fields Medal and newspapers everywhere exploded in congratulation, except for one troubling little article that made a very important point: She’s not the first women to do important mathematics, nor is she the only woman mathematician to date who was capable of winning a Fields Medal.
This is kind of the same thing. Clinton becoming president doesn’t open any floodgates, it creates a sense of possibility, but the next president is almost certain to be a man. Anyone else notice that there were no serious black politicians in the running for this race on either side? (Ben Carson is a doctor, not a politician.) We’ve had our black president, everything is fine now, right? After we’ve had out first woman president? Everything will be fine then.
Here’s something to keep you up at night, what amazing future woman president are we now never going to have? Because we likely won’t see another for another twenty years. That’s long enough for some very promising women to reach the ends of their political careers. I’m not saying vote for Trump. That would be stupid. I am saying that we shouldn’t be too pleased with ourselves.
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Wow, you guys are a bundle of sunshine. Breaking that ceiling is important. It does matter. It matters because, until 2008, children of color would hear, “You know, anyone can grow up to be President. Even you!” and then look over at the poster of all the Presidents and see nothing but faces of old white men, and think, “yeah … right”. Same thing with little girls. No one ever claimed that breaking these ceilings would mean the end to racism or sexism. Literally no one said that. But symbols matter. And this is a pretty big one. So please stop crapping on it.
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Well, maybe we shouldn’t be too pleased with ourselves for not really progressing, but perhaps we could be pleased with ourselves for not regressing…?
Then again, if almost half of all voters pick Donald Trump, not sure we should be tooting our horn for anything…
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Agreed. We’ve had a black president, we’re about to have a female president, and unless the new crop of serious politicians (not tokens!) is more diverse than it has been, we will only see white male presidents in the foreseeable future. Not that there is anything wrong with white male politicians, except for them being politicians 
This too. Nobody is seriously suggesting that progressives vote for Trump. I’m not as giddy at the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency as the Yale Record,* but my animus toward Trump is orders of magnitude worse.
*Who wrote this, Paris Geller?
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I seriously question the role-model theory of progress.
She’s winning against Trump. It wasn’t that long ago that the consensus was that these were the two candidates who could only possibly win against each other.
So she’s just a symbol of one benign or aspirational thing? Or is there a slightly more complicated set of factors at play here? What does it mean for a person to be a symbol? What’s Obama a symbol of? Is he a symbol of drone warfare? Is he a symbol of Chelsea Manning’s continued torture? What will Clinton be a symbol of? I see that her voters and her following isn’t prepared to hold her to any kind of standard and have been eager to explain away anything she’s done that might be remotely troubling. As if she’s not even a politician. So I’m not excited to see what they’ll let her get away with in their enthusiasm. Make no mistake, even the best presidents don’t wield power in uncomplicated ways. And that is precisely why I’m more than happy to crap all over it. People need a reality check. She hasn’t even won yet, and already we’re celebrating her achievement.
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I agree, to a point. I see Hillary Clinton as just another establishment politician, but I have to admit that a lot of work had to be done so she could even get to that point. Then again, if breaking the glass ceiling is just a symbol with no meaningful effect, then it’s just a superlative. Whether or not the new crop of politicians is more diverse in terms of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and experience is far more meaningful than if we manage to put a little crack in the glass ceiling and forget about it.
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Always good advice.
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[quote]In particular, we do not endorse Hillary Clinton’s exemplary leadership during her 30 years in the public eye.
[/quote]Somewhere out there, someone is already resolving to picket the Yale Record forevermore, for in failing to endorse Clinton, they have clearly declared their support for Trump. Because satire is dead.
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some things have to remain sacred.
Not here, not ever.
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…You are entitled to smile when you pass the mile markers on a marathon, though. And doing so does not imply that you think that the race is over.
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It’s not the milestones that matter, it’s the long difficult miles in between.
The problem with milestones is that patting yourself on the back when you pass “mile ten” is meaningless unless you know how long the journey is; “mile ten” might be right at the beginning of a long stretch of desert or a rocky uphill climb.
Racism and sexism aren’t ever going to go away, but the people who screamed about how Obama was going to ruin this country, that he was unqualified, that he was a “stealth Muslim” have damaged their own credibility more than they damaged Obama.
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That makes me wonder…How about an actual footrace where the participants don’t know exactly how long the race is…The finish line is somewhere between mile 5 and 10… It would make pacing oneself very difficult… Not completely unprecedented…In amateur (automobile) road rallys run on public streets, the drivers often don’t know the route or distance ahead of time.
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What makes you think I think that’s the problem?
We could be forgiven for thinking that bit isn’t satire - a perusal of the Yale Record’s notable alumni section on Wikipedia suggests little effort to diversify over the years.
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This is true, but milestones are still important. Racism surely did not end with Obama’ election. If anything, it has encouraged racists to be more open and vocal. But it does represent progress. I’m old enough to remember a time when it would have been completely unthinkable. This year, a Jewish candidate won primaries in some very goyische territory, and yet we see more antisemitism online and elsewhere. In my lifetime I’ve seen homosexuals going from being illegal in most states to getting marriage equality, and many people are okay with that. But homophobia remains. So progress is made, the struggle continue. As it ever was.
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It’s an odd argument to say that Clinton is blocking the path for other female politicians. It’s a small number of potentially amazing female presidents anyway - electable women currently between 50 and 62 years old. Younger than that, and they’ll still be viable in 20 years. Older, and they would be too old to run three election cycles from now regardless of who beat Trump this time. [I’m assuming presidents run for re-election and that amazing female presidents will be Democrats. So, a democrat wins this time, he or she runs again in 2020, that means 2024 before a new democrat is on the ticket.I actually think Hillary’s presidency makes it (very very slightly) more likely that republicans would nominate a woman in 2020.]
But I also don’t think it is true anyway. I agree that it will likely be a while before we have another black president, but African Americans are only 12% of the population. Women are just over 50%.
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One of the values of the milestone is that it might encourage more women to become involved in politics, make it a little easier for women to get elected into other offices. What are the usual pathways to the Oval Office? The Senate, Congress, Governor’s offices. Not exclusively, but commonly. Those offices are now mostly held by men. Encouraging more women to get those offices increases your bench, your talent pool. So if you say, there won’t be another for 20 years, that might be true, but you miss the potential long-term payoff.
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What I meant to say was that one [X] politician getting elected to national office isn’t “shattering the glass ceiling once and for all”, but a more diverse crop of new politicians who are [X] just may be. Breaking the glass ceiling takes more than one person, and it isn’t all about that one person, and it’s laughable to think that we’ve elected an [X] president so all [X]'s glass ceilings are shattered for once and for all.
