Melissa Harris-Perry: since when has racism or sexism disqualified an American president?

[yallerdawg]

I can't imagine why MSNBC silenced THIS voice?

Source: Vox, by Emily Crockett

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“I am not even vaguely surprised by the idea that sexual assault would not be a disqualifier for the American presidency,” Harris-Perry said during a panel discussion. She was responding to a question from the Atlantic’s Peter Beinart about why Trump’s infamous “grab ’em by the pussy” Access Hollywood tape didn’t seem to affect the outcome of the election.

“In fact I was mostly irritated every time people would say, 'Oh God, we can't have a racist be the American president.' Because I kept wondering, 'Since when?’” Harris-Perry continued, to laughter in the crowd. “In fact, for most of American history, racism has been a prerequisite to win the American presidency. One had to actually demonstrate one's racism in order to become the American president. And the same was certainly true of sexism, and even of sexual assault.”

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Another way to look at the idea that racism and sexism are a “prerequisite” for the presidency is to acknowledge how difficult it can be to run an explicitly anti-racist or anti-sexist campaign. Hillary Clinton spent a lot of time doing that on the 2016 campaign trail, and it may have cost her among some white voters.

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As I explained in November, this is one reason why so many people (especially women) voted for Trump despite his boorish public behavior toward women, and despite the assault allegations against him. They not only didn’t expect anything different, they even saw his boorishness as a sort of asset. A strong (male) leader, the thinking goes, may not be polite, but he’ll beat up the bad guys for you — and a “bad boy” streak just comes with that territory.

As Harris-Perry put it, all of this means that 2016 was a “more normal election cycle than you might otherwise have expected.”

Read it all at: http://www.vox.com/identities/2016/12/14/13938396/gender-presidential-election-atlantic-melissa-harris-perry-racism-prerequisite