WVFC Newsmix Looks Back at 2008 and Forward to a Healthy 2009

2008: The Year of the Woman?  Forget 1992: In the last days of 2008,  we can look back on a year of change and see our voices everywhere.  Linda at About.com’s Women’s Issues offers a gallery of a dozen, most of whom Mix has been watching all year.  It was our year for medals, too: Dara Torres, 41, made history with two silver medals. and  Brigadier General Anne Dunwoody joined the Army’s top brass.

  Many raised their voices in the Presidential campaign — and not only Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. This week’s  Newsweek Magazine notes that Oprah Winfrey’s influence on the 2008 presidential campaign is still being debated : "She’s denied that Obama is giving her a job, but we know she already has his ear. Jocelyn Noveck, of the Associated Press , in her roundup caught on to the new wave of power women:

Also energizing women is the sight of important national security posts going to females — Clinton as the top diplomat, Susan Rice as U.N. ambassador, Napolitano as homeland security chief. What global changes, women wonder, might be in store under their influence?

The Audacity of Race:   For many, the election of Barack Obama "was more than a political victory, it was a personal victory."  But, as Mattie Francis observes, "We cannot pretend, as I heard some morning-after political pundits say, that we are “a colorblind nation” at this time in history.  This is a myth."   Writing for the Point Reyes Light , she uses her own interracial marriage and motherhood to examine the questions of race and identity that will color politics, into the new year and the new presidency.

If ever there is way for a white girl from the Midwest to comprehend not only intellectually but also viscerally that race is a social construct with no biological basis, it is for her to give birth to a brown baby. Stephan Thernstrom, a professor of history at Harvard University, said that the United States is the only country in the world in which a white mother can give birth to a black child but a black mother cannot give birth to a white child.


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