White community leaders must respond to the huge numbers of white people voting for Trump
Whatever the result of the US election, white America has once again chosen Trump’s fascism.
An exit poll from the New York Times used research carried out by Edison Research to put together a picture of gender and race differences in voting.
Of course, exit polls only provide a snapshot of elections. There will be updates to these numbers as vote counting continues. There are, however, some insights we can pick up here with some confidence.
The largest voting group was people of no colour. 58% of white men voted for Trump, as did 55% of white women.
The rush to ask ‘leaders’ of minority groups to comment every time a Black or Brown person looks sideways at someone has become a bit of a pattern. The Canary is sure, then, that white leaders will account for their community very soon.
Gains from 2016
Social media users were quick to point out that this 55% was an increase on the 53% of white women who voted for Trump in 2016:
Read on...
The sisterhood of white supremacy staying true to form. https://t.co/IdW3M31qBd
— anamika (@walking_killjoy) November 4, 2020
Let’s not get it twisted
And the 43% of Biden white women voters aren’t all anti-racist activists. Far from it. Biden has history for racist and sexist policies. Votes for Trump are just confirmation that a Muslim ban, kids in cages, the highest death toll of coronavirus (Covid-19) in the world, anti-Black rhetoric, transphobia, and much, much more aren’t a barrier for many people.
The kids locked in cages did not make a dent, man. Y’all act surprised every time like this. https://t.co/6aSQpvmcZp
— tanvi (@Tanvim) November 4, 2020
Bree Newsome, who ripped a Confederate flag down with her bare hands, had this to say.
I actually don’t agree that another candidate from the primary would’ve done better. I think people continue to be in denial about how racist this country is & how committed the majority of white people are to preserving racial caste despite claims of believing the opposite.
— Bree Newsome Bass (@BreeNewsome) November 4, 2020
As Newsome points out below, it once again appears that Black and Brown voters turned up in force to get Trump out.
It’s working class Black & brown people delivering victories for the Democratic Party yet people insist that the party is more elitist than the GOP because the whims of the white working class is all that ever matters in people’s class analyses.
— Bree Newsome Bass (@BreeNewsome) November 5, 2020
Trump has all the capacity for nuance as Boris Johnson at a diversity seminar. His policies have largely happened in full view for potential voters to see.
As a clearer picture of voting patterns across the US emerges, as with the 2016 election, we will see white voters turn to Trump again.
Business as usual
The Daily Show correspondent Jaboukie Young-White had the following to say:
we’re all on the same page that the past four years are the Real America not just a fluke right
— giabuchi lastrassi (@jaboukie) November 4, 2020
Trump is not an outlier. His politics are representative of America’s political climate. Getting him out of office won’t change the support he has had for fascist policies. Trump’s politics are a continuation of the white supremacy at the heart of who the settler United States is.
Joe Biden is going to win. But what people of color have long understood should be clear to everyone now:
Donald Trump is not an aberration, he’s a mirror. And that ugliness we see in him is America’s.
— Derek Johnson (@derekjGZ) November 4, 2020
You’d be forgiven for forgetting that Trump has been impeached. The reasons for impeachment barely scratch the surface of the atrocities that Trump has overseen.
You’d also be forgiven for not needing to hold your breath to see if America would condemn the white supremacist in chief:
They won’t https://t.co/13y2smRlkG
— Zeba Blay (@zblay) November 4, 2020
Whoever wins, one thing is clear:
Whatever happens, we know there will be a creepy old ra[c/p]ist in the White House.
— Kashaan کاشان (@RealKWB) November 4, 2020
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore
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“The majority of white people are committed to [white supremacy] despite claims of believing the opposite”? Jesus Christ, can you not see how counterproductive these kind of statements are? And bullshit, too by the way. Replace the words “white people” with “socialists” and the idea of white supremacy with antisemitism as an experiment: is it legitimate for a third party to assert that whatever you say and do your actions are really driven by bigotry and no defence against the accusation is valid? So we’re accepting that Corbyn is an antisemite then? No?
The white working class have veered right because the parties of the left, founded to represent all of the working class, have been treating them with contempt for thirty years. There has even begun to be a contempt expressed towards this observation, repeated above by Bree Newsome.
But their lives matter too. Firstly because they are human beings and (at the risk of stepping on a language bomb) all lives DO matter; secondly because you will find it hard to persuade them that black lives matter if you don’t accept that theirs do; and thirdly, at a strategic level, because they make up the majority of the US and UK populations and so any political outcome you desire, such as improvements to the quality of black lives, will need a degree of assent from white people.
The identity politics movement is a Trojan horse which has paralysed many movements for social change. It is designed to lead people away from economic and social issues where different groups of oppressed people can find commonality, and into our own silos in conflict with each other, waving the flag uselessly for movements with no aims. It’s absurd to suggest that Knobhead McGee of Farmsville Idaho is somehow more privileged than Kamala Harris, the daughter of two millionaires, and telling him this will only make him reject anything else you say. Telling him you need to take wealth and opportunities away from him will make him furious. BLM was probably the biggest recruiting driver for Trump this year.
The white working class are not your enemy. They are people similarly oppressed as yourself, more so in many cases. They should be your allies. You should be trying to make them into friends, in order to more successfully deliver your own objectives. Telling them they’re privileged white supremacists won’t help that (particularly as it is often middle-class university graduates telling it to people who are in reality far less privileged than themselves).