Either Democrat Is Worthy

DeNeen L. Brown ["A Vote of Allegiance? In the Obama-Clinton Battle, Race & Gender Pose Two Great Divides for Black Women," Style, March 24] assumes I am urging black women to vote gender over race and think racism and sexism can or should be ranked.

I write to cite my public record to the contrary.

I have never tried to persuade anyone to vote gender over race -- or vice versa. I encourage people only to support candidates committed to all forms of equality.

I believe that racism and sexism are linked and cannot be ranked except by individuals in their own experience. In my Jan. 8 op-ed column in the New York Times, I wrote: "The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together." Instead, Brown chose to quote and misinterpret this: "Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life . . . ." If I had meant "more restrictive than race," I would have said so. I chose "most" because masculine and feminine roles restrict most people -- not necessarily more (or less) seriously than race or class or other distortions of individual uniqueness.

She also claimed that I ignore the white violence that limited black male suffrage. I refer her to my New York Times op-ed published Feb. 7, 2007. There, she will also discover I was supporting both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama as presidential candidates. A year later, after primaries forced a choice and I voted for Clinton because of her Washington experience -- and her gallantry in the face of misogyny affecting females of all races -- I still believe that pro-equality voters could double our chances of winning by working for one of these candidates, not against the other.

Apparently, the majority of Democrats who believe this -- and would vote for either excellent candidate -- are not divisive enough to be newsworthy.

-- Gloria Steinem

New York

Gloria Steinem is a writer, an organizer and a co-founder of the Women's Media Center.