Hillary is playing the race card, saying that whites don’t support Obama, they support her. It’s interesting to consider that Obama–whose identity has plainly evolved from black-American to simply American–has never played the male card against Hillary.
Betsy Reed has a fine piece in the Nation, pointing out how disturbing it has been for women who have cheered Hillary in the past to be told that they should back Hillary "out of gender solidarity,
regardless of the broader politics of the campaign." Reed interviewed black women on the subject, and their responses
ran the gamut from
astonishment to dismay to fury. Patricia Hill Collins, a sociology
professor at the University of Maryland and author of Black Feminist
Thought, recalls how, before they were reduced to their race or
gender, the candidates were not seen solely through the prism of
identity, and many Democrats were thrilled with the choices before them.
But of the present, she says, "It is such a distressing, ugly period.
Clinton has manipulated ideas about race, but Obama has not manipulated
similar ideas about gender." This has exacerbated longstanding racial
tensions within the women’s movement, Collins notes, and is likely to
alienate young black women who might otherwise have been receptive to
feminism. "We had made progress in getting younger black women to see
that gender does matter in their lives. Now they are going to ask, What
kind of white woman is Hillary Clinton?" [emphasis mine]
