Race & Gender: Getting to the heart of the divide

PIONEERS Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglass worked together on abolition, but then had a bitter split over who should be first to get the right to vote — women or blacks.

With the race being on, it was probably inenvitable that the race and gender cards would be played in the Democratic presidential campaign.

The Economist reports:

“DR KING’S dream began to be realised when President Johnson passed the civil-rights act…it took a president to get it done”. Hillary Clinton’s remark to a journalist last week, the day before the New Hampshire primary, has sparked a furious debate in the Democratic Party. Over the weekend a host of senior black politicians and activists weighed in, with many criticising Mrs Clinton for what they see as an effort to diminish Martin Luther King’s role in the civil-rights era. Nonsense, retorted the Clinton campaign: the record of Bill and Hillary Clinton on matters of race stands up for itself. The campaign blamed Barack Obama’s team for misrepresenting her remarks in an effort to pry black voters away from the Clinton camp ahead of the Democrats’ important South Carolina primary next week."

http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10521712

Of 43 U.S. Presidents, none have been black men or white women. Or black women, for that matter. Among the multiple cleavages in our society, race and gender are two. How the two movements have been linked in harmony and tension is reviewed here in the NY Times:

"One bitter case from the 19th century involved a split between the abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the women’s rights’ pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton was herself a fervent abolitionist, and a close ally of Douglass, who later confined herself to the cause of women’s equality. These ideals would eventually clash, resulting in increasingly divisive rhetoric that reached a harsh climax after Stanton condemned the 15th amendment — which gave black men the right to vote but left out women of all races — as something that would establish “an aristocracy of sex on this continent.” She also alluded to the “lower orders” like Irish, blacks, Germans, Chinese. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/weekinreview/13leibovich.html?_r=1&ref=weekinreview&oref=slogin

So is race vs. gender a cross-cutting or reinforcing cleavage?

To review, multiple cleavages in one society can be either "cross-cutting" or "reinforcing," which are assessments of the degree to which the multiple cleavages are congruent. That's best explained with an example: if you've got a society where some people are green and some people are blue, that's one cleavage. And then if some people are rich and some people are poor, that's another cleavage. If most of the green people are rich and most of the blue people are poor, you've got a reinforcing cleavage. If roughly equal numbers of each ethnic group are in each economic category, you've got a cross-cutting cleavage.

In general, cross-cutting cleavages contribute to social stability, (but lessen the effectiveness of the movement) while reinforcing cleavages are bad news for the status quo.

Put another way, as explained by WV grad Heidi Hockerberger, a reinforcing cleavage is like a push-up bra, it brings focus to the movement. While a cross-cutter is like a sports bra, bringing more stability to heart of society.