Stop Being So Skeptical of Young Women
LatestLast night, New York made history: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Democratic socialist candidate from the Bronx, won the Democratic primary race against the establishment incumbent, Rep. Joe Crowley. Ocasio-Cortez was born to a Puerto Rican mother and a father from the South Bronx; she speaks Spanish and used to work as a bartender and teacher; she acknowledges in a moving, two-minute ad that “Women like me aren’t supposed to run for office.” It was a victory for New York City, for left-wing critics of the Democratic party, for young brown girls in search of a role model—or anyone who’s tired of this news cycle and could use a little good news at this point.
Sadly, the coverage of her upset from important news outlets has been extremely disappointing: In an Instagram post, for instance, the New York Times Gender section originally identified Ocasio-Cortez “Ocasio-Ortiz” and didn’t change it until several commenters pointed out the mistake. A tweet from the Associated Press announcing Ocasio-Cortez’s win framed it as a loss for Crowley, leaving her name out of it entirely. The New York Times, as my colleague Megan Greenwell pointed out, never dedicated an article to her grassroots campaign (in which she refused corporate donations and ran on universal health care and the abolition of ICE), only mentioning her in a few candidate round-ups and in the context of Crowley choosing not to debate her. Getting her name wrong is a mistake, and a fairly quiet (while still distinctly telling) one; not covering her or naming her at all is a choice, and likewise, one that speaks volumes about the way national outlets viewed a young girl from the Bronx who, as recently as November of last year, waited tables.