As Hillary Clinton finalizes her stroll back to the White House it is worth remembering that her election in 2016 would prove Richard Nixon correct: “.. certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman President–maybe sooner than you think.” (speech from 1969 to the League of Women Voters)
[How else have things changed? Peggy Noonan, one of the idea-generators in Ronald Reagan’s White House, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “[Democrats during her childhood] did not spend their time endlessly accusing people of being sexist-racist-homophobic-gender-biased persons of unchecked privilege. They would have thought that impolite.”]
Why would they think that impolite? They were exactly as sexist, racist, and homophobic as literally almost everyone else in the country in the 50s and 60s. You know, when we still occasionally lynched blacks and beat gay people to death. They’ve probably grown up and realized those things are wrong and make fun of people who still hold on to the ideas that racism and sexism and harassment in general is wrong and maybe it’s in our best interest to fix these problems. But I suppose it’s being nice that is considered impolite these days.
One of the best ways to feel better about ourselves is to posit the inferiority of people in other parts of the world or living in other eras. If everyone in the 1960s was a sexist-racist-homophobe then anyone today who doesn’t pursue these activities on a full-time basis can pat him or herself on the back!
This a big theme in the right wing media. Racism and sexism have been eliminated from American life. The big problem today is the people on the left who derive satisfaction from falsely accusing other of such sins. Peggy Noonan takes it a step further here. She thinks that its impolite to call a racist a racist, apparently even if the racism is beyond question. Just like the rest of the right wing media, she offers no evidence for the assertion that Democrats spend a lot of time making such accusations.
Also, her view of the past is almost certainly false. I’m sure that many Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, must have been calling out the racism back in the days of Emmett Till and Viola Liuzzo.
We don’t have to posit the inferiority of people in earlier eras – we can find plenty of evidence, that however polite they were, they were plenty racist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Byrd
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/sept98/wallace.htm
Strictly speaking Noonan might be right that those other Democrats or Republicans, did not “go around endlessly accusing people of being racist”, though they did join marches, propose and pass laws against segregation and otherwise worked against racism.
On the other hand Peggy Noonan’s party of her youth (I’m sure very politely) exploited racism to attract racists to their party, but it would be impolite to point that out:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/07/15/gop_ignored_black_vote_chairman_says/
Is America delivered from our sins and are colorblind ideal human beings, and is anyone today who doesn’t pursue these activities on a full-time basis can pat him or herself on the back? Of course not, but if you find those back-patters, maybe you should call out those subtle racist sexists to check their privilege