Nominating by Sex and Race

There’s been so much media coverage on Clinton and Obama the past few months that most of my pals have turned to snoring. They say they’re leaning toward Obama, because, well...they just like him better.
Either way the nomination goes, these are amazing times. There’s a woman who’s a contender for the Democratic nomination for US President, and her viable opponent is a black man!
Call me sexist, but I still hope for the chance to vote for a woman this fall. The way things are going, I suspect I won’t be doing so this year.
However the race isn’t over yet, and there’s still plenty of time to puzzle over what it takes for a woman to be a player in this world dominated by men since dinosaurs roamed the planet.
No one can deny there’s been much progress in the past fifty years toward gender and racial equality. However this progress isn’t so obvious in every place in our country.
I grew up in rural Nebraska in the 1950s. Everyone I knew as a kid was white, Protestant, and lived on a farm. There wasn’t much effort put toward any kind of human rights. We worked for the corn and the cattle. If women were in the kitchens, and men on the tractors, so be it.
For reasons that were never revealed, the rural grade school I attended had 9 girls and 41 boys. Perhaps it was the cosmos making up for all the men that had been killed in WWII. Or maybe most folks just drowned their baby girls like they might a sack full of unwanted kittens. It didn’t occur to me then to question the fact that I was the only girl my age.
I grew up playing with boys. I was sturdy and had my wits about me, so I held my own. That is, I gave out plenty of bloody noses, and I didn’t throw like a girl.
The slight attempt my female relatives made to socialize me as to “a woman’s place” was pale in contrast to the influence of my all-male peers.
It wasn’t until high school, when I was around girls my own age, that I was indoctrinated in how to be a girl. Half of me went with the “now I’m a girl” program, and the other half couldn’t forget all I’d learned growing up with boys.
My parents held conservative values, but at least their mindsets were forward looking. They sent me to college in 1968, during the chaos of the war in Vietnam when the culture was exploding with sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.
As might be predicted, my mind exploded (in a good way) with the possibilities of the cultural revolution of that era. I visited California (Santa Barbara) when I was 23. When I realized what a great place this was to be a woman, I moved here.
When I went back to Nebraska to visit, I felt the difference in culture like hitting a bank of cold air. All the “isms” were still alive and well there.
Now thirty-some years later, we’re in the midst of this incredible season of primaries. The pundits work hard at parsing out reasons that some will vote for this candidate, and others for that.
I try my best to focus on policy and personality and to erase my longing to see a woman in the US Presidency. Yet I do hope to see it in my lifetime. And I wish my mother could be alive to see it, too.