Nearly half of our voting population has come forth to shout to the world that this is indeed who we are. Once again, I am left disappointed but unsurprised. This America is the America I know. The America in which people can think racist things, say racist things, and do racist things but not be racists. Not in their hearts. You know, where it counts. This is the America experienced by Black people. This is the America that, when the Black Civil Rights movement of half a century ago forced the government to acknowledge that it would have to provide civil and human rights to the members of the lowest castes, literally washed its hands of its societal responsibilities and has been doubling down on that response ever since.
I’ve seen people defend their votes for Trump because of a single issue. They cannot bring themselves to vote for a candidate who is prochoice or for gun control. I’ve even seen school choice used as an excuse. Yet, for some reason, they have no problem stepping over the bodies of hundreds of thousands of dead to vote for racism, for misogyny, for xenophobia, for intolerance towards LGBTQ+ people, and for environmental destruction that will affect us all. Americans, as a people, are courteous, kind, unfailingly generous, and helpful. But the other side of America, the one fed by fear, resentment, entitlement, prejudice, and, yes, white supremacy – that side is also very real.
In the US we tend to treat large swathes of voters like they are one minded monoliths. College-educated white voters are more likely to vote Democrat. This is one reason the Republicans are so anti-formal higher education. But if you happen to be a college educated white evangelical you are more likely to back Trump. That Trump has such a lockdown on evangelicals further erodes any evangelical claims of Christianity and reinforces the cultish overtones of the faith.
A lot of those states full of college educated evangelical Christians are Southern states where centuries of slavery and discrimination has crushed and corralled Black folks into a generational underclass. Unfortunately, white Southerners, even many of those with college degrees, who have benefited most from this for generations are the least likely to acknowledge it. In second place for this particular form of willful ignorance come those white folks in rural areas of the North. That includes college educated white folks in a lot of possible swing states including Georgia, Texas, and Delaware.
Latino voters are even less of a bloc than white college educated ones. Especially those of first, second, or even third generation whom America has not molded into thinking of themselves as Hispanic or Latino first and El Salvadoran or Venezuelan second. When Trump bashes Mexicans or the undocumented they can shrug their shoulders and think, “He’s not talking about me.” In South Florida in particular there is a voting bloc of escapees from extreme leftist authoritarian regimes for whom the word socialist is an alarm siren. Add this to the fact that many recent immigrants quickly understand that now and historically the quickest path to American assimilation (whiteness or as close to it as possible) is to embrace racism in general and antiblackness in particular. Together with one issue voting on abortion due to a high percentage of Latino Catholics and evangelicals and you end up with a quarter or more still embracing Trump.
The same can be said of Black voters. Antiblackness in America is focused on our “homegrown” Black folks who can trace our history to race based chattel enslavement here in the US. That is not to say that all Black people in America do not feel the sometimes-lethal brunt of this antiblackness. Which is one of the reasons Black immigrants to the US, and their progeny, hold onto their “otherness” as long as possible up to and even including adopting a certain level of anti-Blackness themselves. On top of this you have Black men who are so invested in the Patriarchy that the thought of a Black woman in a position of such power motivates them to vote against her. Which led to almost twenty percent of Black people voting for a man who wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire.
Despite this, the fact is a staggering majority of Americans who are not white* voted for Biden. For Black folks, the number is at least 80 percent. For Latinos it’s around 70 percent. The same cannot be said for white America. The majority of white America still holds tightly to the tattered cloak of white supremacy. Yet Democrats won’t stop lusting after that moderate, white vote. Even though doing so has proven detrimental to the party and ignoring it has won them victory.
Obama may have been a centrist, but he sold himself in 2008 as a radical. In 2016 the only thing revolutionary about Hillary Clinton was her genitalia. In 2018 the biggest gains were made by the most left of center candidates. In 2020, the party only intensified its focus on this mythological moderate, white voting bloc resulting in the loss of seats in the House and maybe, hopefully, scraping to victory in a presidential race in what should have been a landslide. Any victory the party does gain will be the direct result of the support of people of color. Black people. Particularly Black women. Women the party has long taken for granted while courting the love of the lowest common denominator of white folks.
That this race is even close is a slap in the face. It’s not a surprise, but that doesn’t lessen the sting. The North is just as racist and more segregated than the South. Too few white Americans are antiracsist and too many are either actively anti-Black or are not bothered enough by racism and anti-Blackness to do anything about it. Not all white people. Obviously. The small amount of racial progress America has achieved has always been done through convincing a minority of white people that the fight to be acknowledged in our full humanity is not only moral, but also righteous. Racial progress in America cannot be made without white allies.
That said, no Democratic president has won a majority of the white vote since Lyndon Johnson. That was 1964.
The Party puts too much focus on the presidency and too little on the Congress and the state level. A president with Congress against him is ineffectual. And a lot of the power that flows to Washington comes from the state level. State legislatures and state judges write and enforce the voter suppression laws. It is state legislatures who gerrymander the voting districts for senators and representatives to benefit their own parties. And those are over overwhelmingly in the hands of the Republicans. The Republicans have such a stranglehold on local level politics that it is not uncommon for there to be no other parties in a race.
If Biden wins this election it will be because of people of color, because of Black people, and particularly because of Black women. It will be due to Black women led grass roots movements from Black Lives Matter to fights against voter suppression headed by Fannie Lou Hamer in the twentieth century South to Stacey Abrams in the modern South. All of this work done by Black women burdened by multiple layers of intersecting oppression including racism, sexism, and often classism while being demonized by those who claim to support them. Particularly those white feminists who parade their pink pussies in public and vote Trump in private.
Democracy is a work in progress. One that starts from the ground up. Something the Democrats have been ignoring for decades. They need to listen to, promote, and most of all fund community organizers. Including, perhaps especially, those working in communities of color. Though it often does not feel like it, we the people have the power to change things for the better. They are our representatives, not our leaders. They work for us. We need to remind them of that.
*I couldn’t find a national breakdown of Asian voters. Which is telling.
Sources
https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/if-trump-loses-thank-black-people-if-he-wins-blame-w-1845550154
https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/joe-biden-might-still-win-but-white-supremacy-is-undef-1845571677
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/28/im-drowning-californians-of-color-most-affected-by-growing-backlog-of-jobless-aid
https://www.theroot.com/voters-of-color-are-helping-flip-gop-strongholds-we-kn-1845594185
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/black-women-voting-rights/
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-big-chunk-of-white-americans-with-degrees-and-people-of-color-are-behind-trump/