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The article on which these questions and answers are based on is "Feminists and Black Leaders Need to Stop Defending Clinton" by Barbara Ransby (September 1998). "Barbara Ransby is an assistant professor of African-American studies and history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "

1. What is Ransby's argument against Clinton? Is it that she believes that this is about sexuality? Or is it that she believes this is about power?

   I think Ransby considers this issue one of power. "This scandal is not simply about sex or lying. It is about power and its misuse to an extreme degree."

2. What is Ransby's complaint about the way Clinton has treated Black women?

   That he has abandoned them when they needed his support most. He abandoned his nomination of Lani Guinier; he abandoned Joycelyn Elders, his appointee, and the first Black woman to ever hold the position of Surgeon General, and he abandoned poor Black women on the welfare issue.

3. What is the argument that Ransby makes about the public and the private sphere?

   That women have always suffered because they were seen as belonging to the private sphere, over which the community had no control. Community controlled the public sphere. What happened within the private sphere was "behind closed doors," and the community was less willing to interfere. Thus the many problems with domestic violence and child abuse. Ransby says that the clinton affair went on behind the closed doors of the private sphere, but that women have learned that the closed doors must not be allowed to remain closed to mask violence and abuse of power, "One of the major contributions of the women's movement was to remind us of the relevance of private behavior to public life."

Jeanne jcurran@csudh.edu