Man: Which would be better for the international

community? A Woman or a Black?

Woman: I don't know, but as long as it isn't another

stupid White man, we're already better off.

                                                           [Excelsior, Mexico]

Excelsior, Mexico

With Either Hillary or

Obama, 'We All Win' …

"Today, two members of those 'minorities' aspire to lead the most powerful country, whose enormous influence is the fruit of a meticulously constructed capacity: A tolerance toward the other, the different, and the victims of that which has been called 'inequality.'"

By Clara Scherer

Translated By Fernando Uribe

January 18, 2008

Mexico - Excelsior - Original Article (Spanish)

The electoral competition in the United States shows the consequences of setting certain ideas in motion. How can we not exclude, discriminate or despise the other, the different, they who aren't and don't want to be like us? These are the minorities which put together, really are a majority. Those of different origins; women, young people and those of so-called senior-citizen age. Today, two members of those “minorities” aspire to lead the most powerful country, whose enormous influence is the fruit of a meticulously constructed capacity: A tolerance toward the other, the different, and the victims of that which has been called “inequality.”

The story is simple and requires few words. For humanity and in particular the USA, where there has been at least two hundred years of humiliation within an ocean of privilege, human beings have had to fight the phantoms of self-fulfilling prophecy. That is to say, prejudice. That condensation of popular "wisdom” which is expressed in so many sayings, and which are repeated every day and often. That “sentimental education” which says that it's the suit that makes the man, that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and that women are just abject loose-canons, and so on.

This requires the breaking of old habits, engaging with entrenched sentiments and promoting reverse discrimination. In other words, affirmative action. How difficult it is. How important it is. How just. To rediscover everything contained in a word: Woman. Black. Native. Handicapped. Erase it. No, better yet, transform their meanings. Introduce affirmative inflections. Disrupt the scholars of language. Redefine the accuracy of syntax to avoid the suffering caused by odious inequality.

The Empire and the global economy (ie: the peace the development of all) in the hands of Obama or Hillary … This is what the women who met at Seneca Falls, New York, over a hundred years ago dreamed of . Their dream was the result of a conference in London to abolish slavery and promote the rights of Black people in the Western world [the International Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840]. It was at this same conference, in London, capital of the civilized world, that those same rights were denied to women. Who could have predicted what we are witnessing today? They dreamt the impossible and we are succeeding.

[Editor's Note: Having attended the International Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London, Americans Elizabeth C. Stanton and Lucretia Mott were outraged that once in London, female representatives to the convention were denied their rightful seats and consigned to the balcony by conservative abolitionists. This is the event that is said to have prompted them to begin agitating for the equality of women].

Elizabeth C. Stanton  and Lucretia Mott  were gifted women and courageous activists. No one knows what sorrows they had to carry, or the price they had to pay to pursue their ideals. The history books have denied them proper recognition. Martin Luther King  was another giant of this inclusive humanism - humanism in which there is no attempt to deny from one to give to another. In which the purpose is for equality, freedom, solidarity and respect for the dignity of every individual, and the rationale of which is that every person is a unique expression of the species that deserves the same rights as the rest. It is an attempt at equity in which a person's uniqueness is not “abolished,” but recognized; For example, in the area of sexual and reproductive rights. Equality in diversity. True equity.

Susan B. Anthony , another walker on this tortuous path, liked to say that to change society, one must first change public opinion. These were women bent on disseminating ideas through words. Using their gift for leadership and the written and spoken word, they knew that freedom for some meant that freedom should be for all who share the fate of living on this planet.

Obama, Hillary. We all win. Each will follow their personal hopes with his or her own style and allies, putting their energies into transforming a globalized society and contending with global warming, four billion hungry mouths and intolerable suffering. With migrants generating wealth from here and there. From the very bottom of my heart, I pray that they continue this fight, that they arrive at the goal, that they obtain consensus and that they continue to defeat injustice.

claschca@prodigy.net.mx

Click Here for Spanish Version