Hearts are full across our nation and the world—holding everything from despair, sadness, deep anguish and worry to profound relief and optimism. Each person’s feelings, whether of distress or hope, deserve to be honored and heard. Writing helps me to process my emotions and make sense of what seemingly doesn’t make sense to me. So here goes …
In order to win the election, Trump did four things. First, he masterfully MARKETED to White working-class Americans the pretense that he cares about them—and he did this in his grifter fashion by speaking about aspiration and saving the country. Second, he tapped into the continuing post-pandemic economic anxiety that he originally tapped into in 2016. Third, he overtly parked his racist, sexist ideology right in the middle of Republican mainstream politics and middle-class economic anxiety. Fourth, he talked to these Americans in a way that made them feel recognized and a sense of belonging. 53% of them were White women, 55% White Men and 43% Latino men. Keep in mind, Latino’s are not monolithic, and voting differs between those descended from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Mexico, and Central America.
Despite everything we know about Trump—despite his efforts to overturn the election in 2020; despite his racism, misogyny, hatred; despite his professed admiration for dictators, his pledge to be a dictator himself on day one; despite the incomprehensible amount of evidence of Trump’s unfitness; despite his 2 impeachments, 4 indictments, 86 criminal charges, 34 felony convictions; despite being liable for sexual abuse and defamation of E. Jean Carrol which the judge described as rape; despite sexualizing his daughter Ivanka by making overtly sexual comments about her; despite the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump acknowledged that he assaults women and demonstrates that he believes it is perfectly within his rights to do so; despite his rallies descending into disturbing displays of patriarchal fantasy of subjugation, infantilization and sexualized punishment of women; despite his quadrupling down on racism, misogyny, zenophobic, grievance, and White Supremacy. To be blunt and to keep it real, the Trump campaign engaged in a blatantly racist, sexist, shameless, divisive campaign. His advisors and surrogates employed the historical playbook which preyed upon and exploited fearful Whites’ resentment toward immigration, DEI and affirmative action, multiculturalism, LGBTQIA+ rights, and other issues considered anathema to a number of racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and zenophobic to this group.
Trump and White Supremacy grabbed America by the pussy because America granted him permission to do so. It is a disturbing reflection of who we are.
One of the things that confounds Democrats is the loyalty of Trump supporters. It doesn’t seem to matter what he says or what he does. They are unwavering in their vociferous support of him. I’ve been saying this since Trump rode down that golden escalator in 2015 calling Mexicans rapists—only a White man could have gotten away with saying this because we let him. Imagine if Vice President Harris took the stage at the Democratic Convention calling White men racists, rapists and other vile names that Trump called her; there would have been an uproar and she would have been shutdown immediately. Trump said everything he said because folks allowed it, and folks allowed it because Americans have not sufficiently dealt with and confronted the ongoing racism and White Supremacy which are built into the the fabric of this country. Racism and White-supremacy have been the “gateway drug” and Trump could not have come to power without it. There were trillions of times the things he said would have been a deal-breaker for leadership in this country. Instead Americans opened the door to the danger that Trump has represented.
The emotional connection a political candidate has to their base supersedes any stance on policy and Trump grew his constituents over three political cycles—constituents who felt that he spoke for them. According to a Gallop poll, Americans name inflation as the top financial problem. This is not to say that economic anxiety can explain away America’s racist and sexist demagoguery. In fact it’s the opposite. Economic anxiety is a key part of the loss of White male power even as Macho White dudes continue to dominate American politics and workforces.
Same Ole Script, Different Century
I’ve read several autopsies on the election explaining what Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democrats did wrong. Some focused on the Vice President Harris not adequately explaining her positions, while Trump explained nothing except “concepts” of policies. She was criticized for not differentiating herself enough from Joe Biden, as if that wouldn’t have been used against her as well. Pundits went from lauding Vice President Harris for running a disciplined campaign, reaching across the aisle, and trying to expand the electorate to condemning her for not attacking Biden. None of them called out the double standard Vice President Harris faced. Personally, I don’t think Vice President Harris could have run a better, more professional, more inspiring campaign in her 107 days on the trail. It was almost flawless, but for many reasons rooted in our dark, desperate and unacknowledged history, too many Americans refused to buy into her message of hope, joy and unity. Too many Americans want what Donald Trump has to offer them.
Vice President Kamala Harris is a woman of African American and South Asian descent. This opened her up to both misogynist and racist attacks, which she got in droves. VP Harris’ husband Doug Emoff had an enormous weight to bear while his wife was being personally attacked and insulted in demeaning terms during the campaign. Mr. Emhoff quit his job so that there would be no question about a conflict of interest between his job with VP Harris’ work. He bore the weight of the campaign with a dignity and grace that elude too many men.
I remembered what I thought when President Obama was elected. What Black folks said to each other about it was, “They’re going to get us back for this.” But we never could have imagined how strong the backlash would be. We knew there would be retaliation, but this level of retaliation in this short amount of time? In the 16 years since Barack Obama became the President, we lost abortion rights. We lost affirmative action. Voting rights have been gutted—all in retaliation for a system that actually worked in 2008. White Supremacy has systematically dismantled what little we had.
White Supremacy 101
White Supremacy is a local and global power system, structured and maintained by those who classify themselves as White. Whether consciously or subconsciously determined, this system consists of patterns of perception, logic, symbol formation, thought, speech, action and emotional response, as conducted simultaneously in all areas of people’s activity: economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex, and war. The ultimate purpose of the system is to ensure white genetic survival and to prevent White genetic annihilation on Earth — a planet in which the overwhelming majority of people are classified as non-White (black, brown, red, and yellow) by White-skinned people. White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them.[1] In this light, we have to investigate the ways in which all of us, regardless of race or gender, have been conditioned to uphold White male supremacy. We are expected to support White male supremacy in order to get a promotion, to be respected by our peers, for our children to succeed in school. We must ask ourselves what we are willing to give up in order to be free. We must question what we value as individuals and as a society. Leadership should not look like one race or gender; thus power shouldn’t either. We must look at how our votes, our money, and our individual privilege are tied to making sure that White men remain in power over us.
What I know for sure is ….
We live in a country that is fundamentally anti-Black; even more anti–Black woman. And I cannot imagine what the levels of retaliation would have been if folks were asked to follow the leadership of a Black woman. Brittney Cooper a professor at Rutgers, put it this way, “The only place for Black women in the psychic life of America is as wet-nurses …domestics. That is it. That is the psychic place that people have for Black women to be in.” With the level of anti-Blackness and misogyny in this country—we were never going to elect a Black woman. I am heart broken because I believe this. I held hope that VP Harris would become President, and because I know the history of this country, I also carried a healthy skepticism which helps me protect my heart in matters concerning Black women and leadership positions in this country. I’ve seen this in my own life when I’ve had leadership positions how freely microaggressions and unconscious racism comes to light, and go unchallenged. It is important to remember that it is not enough for women to prove ourselves through our great ideas and turn a state blue like Stacey Abrams or by being the most qualified like Hillary Clinton. That didn’t work for either of them. The truth that we have to remind ourselves that the presidency is not a meritocracy. The world that White men have built is not a meritocracy. It is a tactical maneuver for political ends. And once we keep being reminded of that, we will stop having this conversation as though we are debating the merits of which terrible White men are actually better because they are not.
What I also know for sure …
We are entering a repeat of another 4 years of disgraceful White Supremacy. I know that Trump’s MAGA movement is merely a blatant and obvious upgrade of the original patriarchal, White racism that runs straight through every single aspect of American society. I’m still wondering who are the “we” and “us” that the MAGA’s, Liberals and Progressive Democrats speak of? It is certainly not Black people who have yet to achieve full Civil rights in this country and who for over 400 years have had to navigate the always violent, stormy seas of White supremacy.
In Closing … here’s some hope.
“If there is no struggle, there can be no progress.”
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass’ name was above Vice President Kamala Harris as she spoke yesterday in front of Frederick Douglass Memorial Hall on the campus of Howard University. Frederick Douglass transformed his twenty years as a slave into powerful testimony against slavery. After escaping to freedom, he spent several years in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where his eloquent writings and speeches shattered slaveholders’ claims of the intellectual inferiority of slaves – including those made by American presidents. Frederick Douglass would be proud of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Through his brilliance and moral courage, Douglass helped forge a path for future leaders from marginalized communities. While supporting Black men’s suffrage, he stood firmly for women’s right to vote, declaring “We hold woman to be justly entitled to all we claim for man.” That was a very unpopular opinion for White men in this country at that time, and it remains an unpopular opinion among some White men in this country to this day.
What Trump and his people have planned will be critical for understanding the why. So let us not accept a country that accepts the “other-ing” of half its citizenry, that signs up for mass deportations and strips away birthright citizenship, that puts people down rather than lifting them up. We do not want to buy into this. This is why we must continue the push to decenter Whiteness and dismantle White-Supremacy. We have to overhaul our collective psyche.
We can do this by first listening to the concerns, fears and desires of those who support Trump and connecting around our shared values—for example, our desire to feed our families, to be able to purchase a home, and to feel the esteem of having a job that pays well. White supremacy also hurts working White folks and those who hold power and wealth go to great lengths to disguise this fact. They do that by pointing to folks of color as the cause of the pain. While people of color are not the cause, the pain itself is real. We must listen to this pain. Our civilization must evolve to the next level of consciousness. Dishonest propaganda that’s being fed through our media must be exposed through critical thinking and a tolerance for nuance. Let us claw our way out of our dopamine prison. Pornography, social media and consumerism are deepening our descent into apathy and emptiness. Replacing these with authentic human connection and creative hobbies is crucial. “Take care of yourself, take walks, exercise, cook good meals, take a vacation from news and social media; or reach out to ask for help. This could mean taking some time to text a friend or your family to let them know you’re thinking of them. I’ve always found that being of service to others is the best way to take care of my self.”
In hope and radical gratitude,
Dr. Paula
