Nobody has ever gone broke betting on whiteness and patriarchy in America.
What else to make of Donald Trump’s re-ascension to the White Home? How else can we metabolize this insanity and glee that MAGA-lovers are feeling at this second? “Your physique, my alternative,” white nationalist Nicholas Fuentas gloated post-election. Later within the week, Black folks have been assaulted in mass by racist textual content messages invoking slavery by an nameless sender.
Earlier than and since his re-election on Tuesday, there was a glut of suppose items exploring the wayward shift of individuals of shade towards Trump. The implicit message is in charge the 46 % of Latinos, the 20 % of Black males, and the 12 % of LGBTQ voters for his return.
Let’s lower the nonsense. A second Trump time period and the calamity it is going to absolutely produce shouldn’t be the consequence nor fault of People who’re traditionally and nonetheless to stay, marginalized. It isn’t the fault of Arab People, Black People, or Latino People – whose marginal improve in assist from males inside these teams wasn’t sufficient in itself to safe Trump the White Home.
No, it’s the clearest instance of Occam’s razor.
Trump elevated his votes amongst males this election, with 55 % casting their vote for him this week. So did 60 % of white People. Males haven’t given the vast majority of their vote to a Democrat in 60 years, and the Republican celebration has owned the white vote for greater than a decade.
Trump’s impending presidency is a product of white supremacy and the patriarchy it feeds.
The fault lies with too many white People who would cling to the promise of energy they consider they’re entitled to, relatively than hyperlink their destiny to anybody else’s humanity. It’s their lust for exclusionary dominance atop a racial caste.
No matter your opinion of Kamala Harris, she was by no means going to win a majority of white males. No Democratic, not to mention progressive presidential candidate, has obtained a majority of their vote in 60 years, however option to activity a Black girl with the inconceivable. This is not to excuse the feckless and inept Democratic celebration. It’s to say {that a} Trump rise needs to be inconceivable regardless of the political celebration.
Trump is projected to win the favored vote with roughly 74 million ballots forged for him, a determine carefully mirroring his failed 2020 marketing campaign. Almost 85 % of Trump’s voters have been white, unchanged from 2020. Sixty % have been white males.
In our historical past, if we solely counted white males’s votes, we’d by no means have had the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act, the growth of medical insurance, job-protected household depart, marriage equality, and (as paltry as it’s) a rise within the Federal minimal wage. Every achievement occurred underneath presidents they rejected.
One can argue that on account of their voting propensity as a gaggle, we lack common healthcare, free faculty tuition, and a nationwide residing wage. Insurance policies that will be useful to them and the whole nation.
Relating to marginalized communities, our existence on this nation will all the time be precarious until sufficient white males determine to be communally human as a substitute of uniquely superior.
And that may be a determination they’ve made previously.
At a time of chattel slavery when Black males have been auctioned like cattle and solely white males might vote, there have been sufficient of them in 1865 to cross the thirteenth, 14th, and fifteenth amendments – abolishing slavery, extending civil rights, and presenting the suitable to vote (no less than to Black males), with out one Black vote.
With an all-male constituency, there have been sufficient of them in 1919 to cross the nineteenth Modification enfranchising girls with the suitable to vote, with no girls eligible to vote.
With a predominantly straight Congress and Senate, there have been sufficient of them in 2022 to guard marriage equality through the Respect for Marriage Act.
Within the lead as much as the election, the best way our media coddled White males’s sense of self-worth on the expense of the considerations of others throughout this marketing campaign was as repulsive because it was farcical.
Now, I do have sympathy for the plights of white males who our media has fixated on this final 12 months. Their life is tough. They’re experiencing elevated loneliness, habit, financial nervousness, and the record goes on. However the factor is, life isn’t any much less onerous for ladies who nonetheless make 84 % lower than males. Or Native People, who’ve the very best habit charges within the nation. Or Black girls who’re greater than twice as prone to die throughout their being pregnant than their white counterparts. Or Black males, who’re nonetheless greater than thrice extra prone to be killed by police.
But, at one time or one other throughout this marketing campaign, all of those teams have been publicly scolded, shamed, and patronized for not enthusiastically supporting Harris. However not white males. We spent hours of podcasts and gallons of newspaper ink on their assist for exploring their newly found malaise.
In the meantime, the coalition of the traditionally marginalized nonetheless voted as a majority to reject Trumpism.
Trump’s presidency is constructed on the parable of white male exceptionalism. From the best way Trump’s financial plans have been hailed, you’d suppose he magically transported the entire of this nation from the breadline to the penthouse throughout his first time period. His financial agenda shouldn’t be one among mass prosperity. It consists of deficit-widening tax cuts for the wealthy, inflationary tariffs, and mass deportation that can devastate the development and agriculture industries, no less than. Nor did he fake that he was something aside from he was: unapologetic in his brutality of girls, disdaining of trans folks, hater of immigrants, and dismissive of racial prejudices.
Upon information of his reelection, the highest 10% of wealthiest People noticed in $64 billion improve of their web value. Pardon my skepticism of them anticipating a mass redistribution of capital to our poorest.
This nation will solely attain its remaining kind when sufficient white males reject a fantasy of ultra-individualism, superiority, and dominance in favor of a saga of solidarity. A saga that’s tough, difficult, often infuriating —however finally hopeful.
On Tuesday, we noticed that occur in our majority-white state of Washington, and our majority-white metropolis of Seattle. Each dived deeper blue on Tuesday.
Many pundits and commentators are cautious of discussing race at patriarchy in the intervening time. However it’s exactly as a result of we’ve failed for generations to noticeably contemplate these duel poisons and their lingering results that we’ve arrived at this level.
If we settle for that the one recourse we’ve to raised this nation is to bow to the whims of recalcitrant white males then the place precisely does that lead us aside from the hell we’re already in?
