In 1870, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution gave all men the right to vote. It specifically stated that a citizen had the right to vote regardless of race or color.
In 1920, the 19th amendment guaranteed all American women the right to vote.
It took +50 years for women to gain the right to vote after African American men.
Any coincidence we had African American President first followed by a woman President?
Does sexism run deeper than racism?
Couple of responses here ...
Well, that's an interesting question. I don't think sexism runs "deeper" than racism ... but I do think they have some differences in the spheres in which they play out. Men and women crave to live with each other (at least a majority of men and women do), whereas most powerful white people throughout history don't seem to want to live closely with black people, preferring to exploit them from a distance. So, sexism is often in a woman's face even in her deepest and closest relationships, while I'm not sure how much racism black people experience inside their own homes.
And it's not like racism and sexism are separate from each other. They exist in the same cultural place and time -- they impact each other. For instance, it's true that African-American men got the "right to vote" earlier than white women did. But in practice, many/most African Americans were not able to vote until the mid-20th century. Once white women won the right to vote, we didn't have to keep fighting for it. I mean, women had to/have to keep fighting for other rights, but we didn't have to keep fighting for the vote.
So ... clearly the experience of white people and black people is wildly different in this country. White women have white privilege that black men do not, and black men have male privilege that white women don't have access to. Black women lack either white or male privilege, but may for instance have straight privilege that a gay black man doesn't have. It's not a simple, zero-sum type of thing.
And it's not a scorecard. The concept of privilege is just a mental model to help us understand complicated forces that play out in all of our lives. Only when we understand it on a societal level can we begin to even try to shift it at an individual level.
I want to see a black woman president in my life. Possibly right after Hillary. I want a lesbian president. I want a single mother president. I want to continue to see people in leadership who have not been infused with insane amounts of privilege their entire lives.
Put another way, no more generationally-wealthy-white dudes, please -- at least not until we've had at least 43 more presidents with different backgrounds.