I don't have the answers yet, but I have learned enough to be dangerous, and ask better questions..

But you can only understand this if you know the audience to whom she was directing them

The Obama-drama, the Obama-nation, the Obamania - forget the black vote. I read blogs in January questioning whether he was too pretty, not black enough, or strong enough to get the nomination...all written by African Americans. The black population is 12% of this country's population. If every single last black person voted, they still wouldn't be able to carry a candidate if only 12% of the nations non-black vote got out and voted for the other candidate. So blacks voting for blacks is not the issue, nor is it what Ferraro was addressing.

She was talking to whites. She was speaking to white people, as a longtime veteran of advocating for the feminist agenda. She, like a great many feminists and women in general and men, all thought Hillary was a clean sweep candidate for the nomination. Those of you about to berate me that women's rights are all taken care of, white women in particular, save it for another ear. I've had enough experiences being discriminated against to rule all of what you are about to say completely out. And you can't argue ideals against the hard, cold experiences that serve to tell one what the world is really up to.

Contrary to popular thinking on the subject, women are still widely discriminated against. I am an angry white female. If I spend time perusing blogs written by black females, it will take me all of ten minutes to realize that being white gets me past at least half of their hurdles. I've compared notes with other females in corporate America - it's pretty damned ugly out there. They don't ask me to make coffee anymore, mind you, but if I point out we have an issue in a particular department, I am just being 'pushy', 'bitchy', or 'emotional'. It couldn't be that there's a real problem. I have watched men look down on me for getting ahead, or for working to resolve a problem, only to have them come to the same conclusion miraculously, seemingly on their own, and take credit for it.

Grrrr.....

But this post isn't about that. This post is for the women born prior to about 1970 who have been kicked, punched, and had the business / political world tell them to get back in their place enough times to know that despite modern feminists, or young would-be-feminists' thinking that 'well, like, it's all equal now' is nothing but daydreaming, and the wake-up call will be harsh indeed.

Ferraro's generation had it way worse than my X generation. She and Hillary were on the front lines, and those battle lines make my skirmishes seem like kindergarten foibles. To have that much history, nearly 50 years of fighting this fight, only to watch young women piss it all away to chase some nice, good-looking, inexperienced racially mixed cool guy, and throw their energy behind him...

Well it must make a girl's stomach turn. Even if she is 72.

And of course there is tons of white guilt going on here. Tons. There are so many whites who have genuine anguish over the way blacks have been treated in this country, over the centuries of abuse, slavery, torture, degradation, denigration...well, it's a very ugly corner of the American heart. And many of these whites are the well-educated ones, because they bothered to learn the history, bothered to explore it, they feel worse.

Not enough to provide the acreage of land and donkeys called for in reparation, mind you. But at least enough to feel bad, feel genuinely guilty.

And when along comes a candidate with Denzel Washington appeal, good looks, a black evangelical sound, and a thoroughly cool hip cat, well all that young idealism (that doesn't know about women's struggles, nevermind black struggles) and the educated set (that feels such anguish and angst) can't wait to throw their support to this guy...and the media, terrified of being accused of being racist give the guy nothing but a free pass in terms of scrutiny, while racking Hillary up as capable of everything from single-handedly playing the media as victim / master-super-mind / bringer down of the entire Democratic party...without doing the mental calculus of how much time and staff would have to be in gear behind such a plot...my gosh, it would take a 5 star general, an army of staffers, a complicit media, and more political friends than any war chest could buy you...

In short, it's not even feasible.

And when longtime veterans of the feminist front, for whose hard-won benefits youngsters can gloss over as though it were all predestined rather than fought-to-the-teeth for, it can make a girl pretty darned mad to see us get a decent candidate up to that glass ceiling, and have it all swept away by Denzel charisma and not a whole lot else.

And THIS is where she was directing those remarks. She wasn't saying that it's a problem for Obama to be black. She was angry that young people had no idea what they were really up to, pretending that race and all that doesn't matter. They haven't experienced how much it DOES still matter. Those of us out here started out as idealists, too, you know. She was also pointing a finger straight into White Guilt and asking, what are you up to? I've heard hordes of my white friends start their reasoning for backing Obama as, 'well, for the first time, a black man is running for president...' and then gush into inspiration and all that.

That's white guilt talking. That's the sense that if I throw my vote to the good-looking non-threatening black guy, I will somehow be making up for the horrible things I know my people have done to his people in the past.

It is THIS that Ferraro was taking issue with.

And for that, we ought to thank her. At least she was honest.

If a candidate wins because of merit, because they clearly are the right person for the job, I am all for it. But if they win so we can assuage our collective white guilt....count me out.

I am ready to give to the reparation fund. That's at least the honest thing to do.