As the news stories pile up about police shootings of black men in the U.S., there can no longer be any doubt about the country being deeply rooted in racism. As Hillary Clinton said, when she addressed a black church in Charlotte, North Carolina, “Because my grandchildren are white… they won’t face the kind of fear that we heard from the young children testifying before your city council." Clinton was referring to the children who spoke to the Charlotte Council after the police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott. There was a catch in Clinton’s voice. It was either genuine emotion, or exceptional acting. But the reactions to Clinton herself embody something else, perhaps even deeper than racism. The U.S. is also undeniably sexist.

Gender-coloured criticism As Larry Womack wrote in the Huffington Post, none of the criticisms aimed at Hillary Clinton would ever be directed at a man: “They hold her to wildly different standards than her male counterparts. They regard her with an unprecedented degree of suspicion. Above all, they really, really want to see her punished.” Womack calls it “the woman card.” Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not advocating for Clinton. I’m objecting to the prejudice against women revealed by this election campaign. For many Americans, it was bad enough that a black man should occupy the White House. But at least he was a man, even if his detractors did their best to convince themselves he wasn’t legitimately American. But a woman as president? A woman telling men what they can and can’t do? A woman sending American men into war, to get killed? Maimed? At least the wounds of war are honourable blood. Not like, ugh, menstrual blood… Besides, everyone knows that women are notoriously emotional. They have mood swings. They’re softhearted. You can’t have that in a Commander-in-Chief. Why, such a president might think that playgrounds for impoverished children mattered more than expensive toys for the older boys in the Pentagon. She might have irritable days, when she got short-tempered with lobbyists for gun associations, pharmaceutical pill-pushers, or toxic chemical makers. A man, a real man, would never act that way.
Guys get away with it Hillary Clinton can never belong to an old boys’ club.

 Former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, told Clinton how he intentionally used his Blackberry to evade federal record-keeping regulations. But still it’s Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server that has become an election issue, not Powell’s. As Nina Burleigh wrote in Newsweek: “Clinton’s email habits look positively transparent when compared with the subpoena-dodging, email-hiding, private-server-using George W. Bush administration. Between 2003 and 2009, the Bush White House ‘lost’ 22 million emails. This correspondence included millions of emails written during the darkest period in America’s recent history, when the Bush administration was drumming up support for what turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq…” Burleigh also notes that for extended periods, Vice-President Dick Cheney apparently sent no e-mails to anyone. For anything. As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney wiped servers clean, sold government hard drives to aides, and spent $100,000 in taxpayer money to destroy his administration’s emails. But they were all men. So they’re aboveboard.

Emulating a male God I think this prejudice goes back to American popular religion. Overwhelmingly, Americans would agree that God is male. (And certainly not black.) Few Americans would dare imagine God actually having a penis, but there is no doubt in their minds -- at least metaphorically -- that God has balls. He is, after all, all-powerful, all-knowing, in charge of everything. To use another metaphor, God wears the pants in the heavenly pantheon. By wearing pant suits, Hillary Clinton shows she wants to overturn the rightful order of men and women. The Bible says that God made man in His own image. Therefore men belong in the penthouse. For vast numbers of Americans, it doesn’t matter that Donald Trump has had six bankruptcies, three marriages, lost $916 million in a single year, pays no taxes, blames blacks for crime and Muslims for terrorism, supports racial profiling, dislikes fat, and in the first debate uttered a lie every three minutes. Donald and God share a bond of brotherhood. Hillary, obviously, does not. The theological concept of incarnation baffles many people. That a God who is not human could be embodied in a human is hard to visualize. Then try this illustration -- Donald Trump incarnates America’s history of racism and sexism. Scott Gilmore mused in Maclean’s that Trump’s supporters back him “not despite the fact that he is a bigot, but because he is a bigot.”

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Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved. To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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YOUR TURN
Tom Watson confirmed the sense that I mentioned last week, the idea that there are fewer and fewer letters to the editor in newspapers: “In my neck of the woods there are fewer and fewer letters to the Editor. Because there are fewer printed newspapers, thus fewer Editors to whom to write. “The Guelph Mercury folded last year after being published for 167 years. The Hamilton Spectator and Kitchener Waterloo Record both now include less local news in favour of recycled pieces from national events. “Seems to me that traditional Letters to the Editor were generally comments on something of local interest. Yes, a few were written at the time of provincial or federal elections, but these were, by nature, cyclical.
“The upshot is that your ‘second half of communication’ grows exponentially smaller.”

 Isabel Gibson liked my analysis: “Anais Nin wrote, ‘We write to taste life twice.’ Following your argument, maybe we write to think about life even once!” Some you will not know, because you don’t subscribe to Isabel’s blogs, that she has been campaigning (seriously, but light-heartedly) for more of a year to get appointed to the Canadian Senate. So she liked “the analogy between writing and the Senate -- I'm just a natural sober-second-thoughter, maybe! And if I don't get appointed, I can carry on by myself.”

Sheila Carey commented, “I think that I’ve only once written a letter to the editor, but the letters page is my favourite part of the newspaper, and the only part that I miss living where we don’t have a local a daily newspaper. (The digital one that just started up doesn’t count – it has no editorial page!) “I often find that the comments after the articles in on-line news sources like The Tyee are the best part, in spite of the occasionally offensive tone by those who blast off without thinking.”

 James Russell actually wrote a letter to the editor, and kindly sent me a copy: “Jim Taylor’s right: Newspapers give us facts and opinions gathered by the wise, but Letters to the Editor let the public speak back both on the events and the coverage. Communities are built on dialogue, and following Jim’s advice on crafting such letters will make for better papers, a better community, and an easier job for editors as well. “A word to the wise: Give that man a raise!”

The issue of Gretta Vosper’s trial for pushing the limits of The United Church of Canada;s theology too far keeps going -- and probably will until there is some final resolution. Sheila Lavender wrote, “I can’t help wondering if all this matter started as the result of ‘bullying.’ We as a church have yet to deal with bullying in the church. My own experience is that when someone is jealous of another and has a bullying tendency, they try to discredit the other. I couldn’t help but think of that when all of this business first began, but I have yet to see any mention made of it. Maybe I have it wrong, but something inside of me says it is a powerful factor in this case. If only we had learned to recognize [the tendency to bully] early and root it out before all the festering bubbled up!”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
This column comes to you using the electronic facilities of Woodlakebooks.com.    If you want to comment on something, write me at jimt@quixotic.ca. Or just hit the “Reply” button.    To subscribe or unsubscribe, send me an e-mail message at the address above. Or subscribe electronically by sending a blank email (no message) to sharpedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca. Similarly, you can un-subscribe at sharpedgesunsubscribe@lists.quixotic.ca.    Unfortunately, the archived columns at http://edges.Canadahomepage.net have disappeared. The site was hijacked, and I haven’t been able to get it back I’m hoping to have a new website up fairly soon.    I write a second column each Wednesday, called Soft Edges, which deals somewhat more gently with issues of life and faith. To sign up for Soft Edges, write to me directly, at the address above, or send a blank e-mail to softedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca

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