Feng Yuqing
US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama won the primary election in Mississippi on the 11th by a large margin of 61% to 37%.
Mississippi has 33 delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Obama's victory was expected by everyone. The state has the largest proportion of the black population in the United States - the 2000 census showed that 36% of the population was black, and black people accounted for 70% of the registered Democratic voters in the state.
Voting is "black and white"
The post election poll shows that the voting tendency of registered Democratic voters in Mississippi is highly coincident with the racial division: Obama has won the support of the vast majority of blacks, and the proportion of black voters voting for Obama and Hillary Clinton is 91% to 9%; Obama and Hillary Clinton scored 21% and 72% respectively among white voters. Before that, only Alabama and Arkansas, the hometown of former President Bill Clinton, had seen such clearly divided voting results by race. In South Carolina, which also has a large black population, Obama won a large area of support from black voters, but he also received 25% of the white vote (at that time, there were three Democrats running for office, and the other was Edwards).
The role of racial differences in the general election caused controversy again because of the remarks of Geraldine Ferraro, a former congresswoman, before and after the Mississippi primary election.
Ferraro is a supporter of Hillary Clinton. She recently said that Obama was successful because he was black. This statement was criticized by many people, but Ferraro said in an interview with a California media on the 11th: "Racism has two directions. I really think they attacked me because I am white."
She compared Obama's situation with her becoming the first female vice presidential candidate in American history 24 years ago. She said that if she was not a woman, she would never have been nominated at that time. The same reason can also be used to explain Obama's current approval rate.
Ferraro said in an interview with the media last week: "If Obama is white, he will not go this far... The whole country is attracted by such a concept (he is black)." She also pointed out that Hillary Clinton is the victim of "sexist media".
Obama himself accused Ferraro's remarks of being "obviously absurd". Hillary Clinton also told the Associated Press that she did not agree with Ferraro's view, because the real difference between her and Obama is in political issues, and people should focus on this aspect.
However, when the first black and the first female are running for the presidential nomination, attention to race and gender is still unavoidable. During the primary election in South Carolina, Clinton compared Obama's election with that of Jesse Jackson, the black civil rights leader, who ran for the House of Representatives in 1984, and said that Obama would definitely win South Carolina because he was black. Clinton's remarks were widely criticized as "playing the race card" at that time.
Gender is not as obvious as race
Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton avoided playing the race and gender cards in the campaign. However, there is no doubt that Obama has won the support of most blacks so far, while Hillary Clinton, as a woman, has failed to gain the same enthusiasm from female voters.
On the "Super Tuesday" (February 5) of the primary elections in more than 20 states at the same time, Sakina Sprell, a black female voter in New Jersey and Hillary supporter, changed her mind at the moment of voting.
"Obama, as a black person, can come to this step, which deserves my loyalty to him," Spree told the First Business Daily.
In the United States, people are very sensitive to the issue of race, with a clear distinction between right and wrong, but do not pay the same attention to gender differences. The Times recently wrote that the economic advantages and political representation of ethnic minorities have improved in most parts of the world, while the gap between the sexes has rarely narrowed, even in the United States.
Some women's organizations have expressed concern that Hillary Clinton has not won enough female voters' votes. On the 4th of this month, before and after the primary elections in Ohio and Texas, the National Organization for Women clearly pointed out that in fact, gender, like race, is a deep-rooted problem in American society, but from this election, gender equality has not received enough attention.
Gloria Steinem, an intellectual leader in the feminist movement in the 1970s, blew a passionate battle horn to female voters after Hillary Clinton lost the Iowa primary. She wrote in the New York Times: "Why don't people face up to gender barriers as they face up to racial barriers? Obama became commander in chief because of his racial identity, but Hillary was" split "because of her gender... We must be able to say this: 'I support Hillary because she can become a great president, but also because she is a woman.'" This article was published before the New Hampshire primary election and reprinted by the national media, which also helped Hillary win in New Hampshire.
