Shirley Chisholm published The Good Fight in February 1973 amid the optimism of Roe v Wade being decided (7-2) in January 1973 and the pessimism of Nixon’s reelection (49 out of 50 states) in November 1972. Shirley Chisholm, a Black woman, sought the Democratic nomination for president to unite Blacks, women, youth, and other minorities. They lost to the “arrogant white intellectuals” who “were convinced that they knew what minorities, women and other groups needed. Why bring them in?” Fifty years later, little has changed except that Roe v Wade has been overturned.
Chisholm had many insights into politics in America. The observation that I found most enlightening was America is NOT a “melting pot,” as I was taught in school. The naïve conception once taught, and perhaps taught still in the public schools, was that America is a “melting pot.” It has become clear in the last two decades that this was never true, that American society is instead a “mosaic” of elements that exist side by side but have never lost their identities. The minorities—Germans, Jews, Irish, Italians, Greeks, Slavs—have not been assimilated into the population after two or three generations. Every big city politician knows this; ethnic voting blocs are a fact of life for him, and a great deal of attention is paid to ticket-balancing as a way of dealing with them. Something is provided for the Irish Catholic vote, something for the Jewish vote, and so on.
Shirley felt that sexism was worse than racism. I repeated what I have said many times, that during twenty years in local ward politics, four as a state legislator and four as a member of Congress, I had met far more discrimination because I am a woman than because I am black.
Some of the issues that Shirley Chisholm felt were important included: the Middle East, welfare reform, statutes of Confederate soldiers, campaign finance reform, political incivility, rivalry between black men and white women campaign workers, and abortion.
Shirley Chisholm was an astute observer of American politics and her book is well worth reading 50 years later.
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