The first woman to run on a major party ticket in a US presidential election.
Her family said “Geraldine Anne Ferraro Zaccaro was widely known as a leader, a fighter for justice, and a tireless advocate for those without a voice. To us, she was a wife, mother, grandmother and aunt, a woman devoted to and deeply loved by her family. Her courage and generosity of spirit throughout her life waging battles big and small, public and personal, will never be forgotten and will be sorely missed.”
Her congressional biography is here.
Feminist Philosophers 
And for girls of my generation, she was a very inspiring role model. Sniff!
Jender, I have the sense that some how she made my ability (and I suppose that of many, many others) to image possibilities for women fuller and more vivid.
Hume was on to something with “force and vivacity.” Impressions can enliven ideas. :)
I was concerned, though, that my own positive thoughts in the post might attract some negative remarks about things she got wrong. Not what one wants today.
Geraldine Ferraro did not add much to the male intellectuality and terms of discussion. Though she is a decent intellectual.
Geraldine was a formidable intellectual and trailblazer for the philosophy of race. “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” It’s too bad more scholarly work is not devoted to her.
Tina, exactly. That’s just what I had in mind when I refrained from signing her praises in the post.
Some recent theorists have been arguing that we don’t have ‘characters’ as traditionally conceived, as in a good character or a bad character. That’s one way of thinking about this situation. One version of it would be that most of us are capable of such crap and our appearance of virtue is really situational. I think that might be true.
Added: that’s not an excuse for her, but it is a reason for thinking very few of us are that much better. I.e., very few are too good to have such thoughts. With racism, that seems to me reasonable to think.
If Socratic intellectualism is false, then you need to be more understanding towards your partner when they commit adultery, smack you across the face, or steal your income tax return. That is, you need to be more forgiving, more loving, more sympathetic towards their human, all too human disposition.
Tina, I’m sorry, but I am not getting what you are saying. I thought your first comment was sarcastic, but now I’m wondering if I’m following at all.
@jj simply because she passed on does not make the racism that she engaged in disappear. It is not an accurate legacy to praise her without acknowledging all her faults. I really am tired of seeing feminism uplift White people who have so clearly hurt POC. She is no hero to me and never will be.
Renee, I am glad you are bringing up these issues, but do notice I have not praised here.
I doubt I could list all her faults; assessing the most well-known statement about Obama would mean taking into account her own statements about it. I think that could be a very importsnt project, but I don’t feel I can do it myself.
“Hell, she sponsored a Constitutional amendment to ban school busing. Everybody stop and think about that: She wanted to amend the freaking Constitution to pander to bigoted, scared white ethnics. And that’s the most charitable interpretation. A FoxNews Democrat twenty-five years before there was a Fox News…. [A]s others have said, Ferraro was in the right place at the right time when Mondale was looking to make a political splash, and she got that break because Tip O’Neill liked her better than noisy feminists like Pat Schroeder.”
http://letters.salon.com/politics/war_room/2011/03/26/geraldine_ferraro/permalink/b3287711e84d1979755d1b23a96195cd.html
It is shocking to remember the wide support an amendment had. Including from Jimmy Carter.