Obama’s win revealed America’s racism. Will Hillary’s run show its sexism?

Could Hillary’s run for president change the US in the same that happened with Barack Obama?

I mean latent sexism coming to the fore just as Mr Obama’s 2008 election victory exposed America’s latent racism.

Everyone read the results of that 2008 election wrong. Everyone thought America was in a post-racial phase, a glorious time marked by harmony and mutual respect. Everyone thought the long years of racial divisions were over.

They were and they weren’t.

Yes, America was inclusive enough to elect a visually black, racially half-white and half-black man to the highest office in the land. And yes, there was a part of America that resented it.

In fact, eight years of President Obama have exposed America’s deep racism. Eight years of having a “black” man in the White House has left America treading carefully through the minefield of race relations.

Could the same sort of divide be exposed by Donald Trump just because he wants to defeat Hillary in the general election?

Dana Milbank makes a good point in The Washington Post.

Mr Trump’s general-election strategy — against the first woman to lead a major party’s presidential ticket — is built on gender resentment, writes Mr Milbank.

He quotes a new study by Dan Cassino, a political scientist at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. It shows the extent of gender animus. “Cassino found that the ‘gender role threat’ — a perceived threat to male identity and masculinity — leads to increased support for Trump among men, and lower support for Clinton,” writes Mr Milbank.

Political scientists like Dan Cassino are simply telling what we already know to be true. That white men, who once used to run everything, are frightened and angry they no longer don’t.