White Women and Black Men Elected Trump. What's Up With That?

Dec. 19, 2016

Information technology was an ballot full of surprises, but perhaps the biggest one comes when crunching the voting numbers. Although Trump ran on a platform hostile to women's reproductive rights, and despite a personal history of verbal and physical assaults on women, he won a majority of white women voters. Further, in spite of the racial violence at his campaign rallies, the raw appeals to white nationalism and racial resentment, and the vow to crack down on communities of color, Trump managed to salvage a small, withal sizable, minority of the African-American male vote.

What is going on here, and why do some people seem to vote against their interests?

White women handed Trump 53 percent of their votes, despite all that he has said most and done to women. Among white men, he did fifty-fifty amend, winning 63 percent (including 54 per centum of those with a college degree, and 72 percentage without). While 80 percent of blackness men chose Clinton, still xiii percent voted for Trump. Similarly, 62 pct of Latino men favored Clinton, but in spite of Trump'due south anti-Latino diatribe calling Mexicans rapists and murderers, and his promises to build a wall and round up millions of undocumented immigrants, a full 3rd of these voters favored him at the polls. Meanwhile, black women, who have the highest voter turnout of whatever demographic in the age of Obama, voted overwhelmingly (94 percent) for Hillary Clinton.

As the most educated demographic and the virtually reliable voting bloc, African American women become to the polls out of a sense of responsibility, co-ordinate to the Black Women's Roundtable, and are driven past bug rather than optics. Blackness women, motivated by concerns over Trump, did their part and were the most inclined to vote in their own interest. No wonder many experience equally if white women have permit the sisterhood down.

All of this occurred within the context of voter turnout at a twenty-yr depression, with specially depression turnout among Democratic constituencies in central battleground states such equally Pennsylvania, who showed up for Obama but non so much for Clinton.

Locally, turnout in Philadelphia was only 64 percent, four points lower than 2008 and 2 points lower than 2012. Further, 346,000—a third—of the 1.2 million voting age city residents are not registered to vote. Moreover, black turnout dropped from 2012. Turnout fell the most in the neighborhoods with the highest concentration of black residents, decreasing over x percent in 12 majority-black wards in North and W Philadelphia, but increasing more than 10 percent in six wards that are less than 25 percentage African American. Clinton received 20,000 fewer votes from Philly than did Obama four years before, and won the city past 35,000 fewer votes, while Trump won the state by 60,000 votes. With Obama no longer on the ballot, people were non as enthusiastic about voting for Hillary, and peradventure not fearful enough of Trump. Also, the Clinton campaign did not give out any street money to ward leaders and commission people on Ballot Day on the belief that their ain ground operation would get the job done.

Trump's rhetoric failed to sound alert bells because white women are taught that white men are safe, according to Ali Michael of Penn's Heart for the Written report of Race and Equity in Education. "Nosotros take white nationalist terrorists in our land who go to schools and commit mass shootings, but we're non agape of immature white men," she says. "We're afraid of young black men—because white people don't fit into a group that is immediately stereotyped."

What was it? What led so many white women to vote for Trump?

According to Ali Michael—managing director of Thou-12 Consulting and Professional Development at the Center for the Written report of Race and Equity in Education at the University of Pennsylvania—race teaches to be afraid of the wrong people. Thus, Trump's rhetoric failed to sound warning bells considering white women are taught that white men are safety.

"We accept white nationalist terrorists in our land who become to schools and commit mass shootings, but we're non agape of young white men, nosotros're afraid of young black men—because white people don't fit into a group that is immediately stereotyped," says Michael, who studies how white families racially socialize their children. She is the author of Raising Race Questions: Whiteness, Research and Educational activity —a book for teachers in agreement the part that race plays in their lives and in their classrooms—and co-editor of Everyday White People Face Racial and Social Injustice: 15 Stories. "Trump'due south 'Make America Great Once again' message is comforting to those who are scared and searching for a simple solution. That is the other side of sexism—y'all want someone to handle it and arrive better."

Every bit Michael suggests, it is easy for whites to be apathetic to their racism, and for white women to exist indifferent to their role in perpetuating misogyny. After all, Trump'southward racist and sexist comments, and remarks near people with disabilities, still rude and offensive to some white women, manifestly were insufficient to disqualify the candidate in many women'southward eyes.

That may be because such rhetoric doesn't accept the same consequence in their lives.

In improver, many whites simply exercise not realize the implications of harmful policies in their individual lives. "Whites can exist more allowed to drastic swings in policies," Michael says. "When Trump says that he is going to use more aggressive policing in black neighborhoods, or round up millions of Mexicans or create a Muslim registry, many whites will believe that does non impact them."

There is, of class, a long history of this. The Southern Strategy immune the Republicans to gain white support by opposing ceremonious rights and social programs in general. "Y'all showtime out in 1954 past proverb, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger,'" said the tardily GOP strategist Lee Atwater. "By 1968, y'all can't say 'nigger'— that hurts you. Backfires. Then you lot say stuff like forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff. Yous're getting then abstract at present [that] you're talking well-nigh cut taxes, and all these things you lot're talking near are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites."

And equally President Lyndon Johnson once said: "I'll tell you what'due south at the lesser of it. If you tin can convince the lowest white human being he'southward better than the all-time colored man, he won't observe you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look downwardly on, and he'll empty his pockets for yous."

Under Trump, the dog whistle of racial politics became a bullhorn. Although the president-elect ran on populist economical themes, race trumped economic science. And we will expect to see how Trump's "white working class" supporters react afterwards he appoints billionaires to cabinet posts, captains of manufacture who seek to remove worker protections and overtime pay, lower the minimum wage and cut their Social Security, Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid.

Meanwhile, what explains the thirteen percent support for Trump amid black men, which was 2 pct points higher than Mitt Romney got in 2012? For some blackness working class men, Trump'south economic message may have played a greater function than his racist rhetoric. Add together to that the myth of Trump equally a cocky-made billionaire, his celebrity status and theatrical machismo, not to mention to pledge to resurrect "law and order" policing in inner cities, and it'southward not hard to meet why some would take him upward on the flyer he directed at African-American voters: "What have y'all got to lose?"

Today, blackness dissatisfaction with Democrats is manifest in a feeling of being taken for granted. For all of the talk of angry white working class voters, African-Americans tend to hurt more than. The wage gap between blacks and whites is the worst in 4 decades, while the racial wealth gap separating blacks and Latinos from whites has widened since the Great Recession, as households of color witnessed an historic loss of wealth. Black men are unemployed at double the charge per unit of white men, and African Americans are far more likely to autumn into poverty and deeper in it. And the average black family would need 228 years to build the wealth of an average white family today.

What explains the xiii percent support for Trump among black men, which was two percentage points higher than Mitt Romney got in 2012? For some black working class men, Trump'southward economic bulletin may take played a greater part than his racist rhetoric. Add to that the myth of Trump as a self-made billionaire, his celebrity status and theatrical machismo, not to mention to pledge to resurrect "law and order" policing in inner cities, and it's non hard to run across why some would take him up on the flyer he directed at African-American voters: "What take you got to lose?"

Consider also the massive racial inequality and economic disparities in Philadelphia, where most 1 third of black families live in poverty, and median income is two-thirds that of white families, according to the Urban League of Philadelphia. Only one in five black young people who are out of school take a task, compared to three in five whites. Further, there are 30,000 missing blackness men between age 25 and 54 due to incarceration and mortality.

Although there is no indication that he would make improvements, but rather that he could crusade more harm, Trump's statement that Democratic governments accept failed the inner cities has at least some merit to it. Poverty is endemic decades after the Groovy Society programs of Lyndon Johnson, with Republican and Autonomous support in Washington for welfare reform, trickle-down economics and policies of upward income distribution since then.

And so what can be done? Long term, in a nation that is governed by "fake news" on Facebook and where students are non learning adequately most civics or history, a more educated citizenry is our all-time promise. But it's unclear that in that location'due south a consensus over what we need to become smarter at. "People who accept studied authoritarian regimes are putting out warnings, and people are not even responsive to that," Michael says, noting that, despite the alerts, a unsafe situation is brewing in America and many are ignoring information technology.

Many white Americans, Michael insists, lack a racial consciousness and demand identity development. Failing to acknowledge they're white, and lacking an understanding of the racialized history of this land, she argues, they believe the world is off-white and believe in a colorblind guild. "If y'all are trying to exist colorblind, yous're not seeing guild fairly," she says. "If you lot don't see how racialized policies create the inequities, y'all attempt to use a colorblind arroyo to explain mass incarceration. You say, 'They're not working hard enough, they're not family oriented,' or 'They don't care.' If yous're not taught the accurate history of the state and the mythology of racism hither, and so racism is the truth."

In the short run, possibly our best bet is for people—you and I—to reach out to our communities and have tough conversations with families and friends about Trump, the election and racism. Organizations such as Showing Upward for Racial Justice are organizing white folks around the land and in Philadelphia to reply to racist attacks and act as a "multiracial majority for justice." Just then will we accept an informed populace that votes in its ain interests, and elects the leaders it truly deserves.

Header photo: Voters at a Trump Victory Tour upshot in Heshey, Pa. Image by Michael Vadon via Flickr

bigelowbrist1952.blogspot.com

Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/trumps-unlikely-friends/

Share this post