Some less scattered thoughts on last night's election results

[owlmoose]

But probably still a little scattered, since I didn't get much sleep last night.

1. I wasn't expecting this because nobody was expecting this. Reportedly, even the GOP's internal polling showed Donald Trump heading for defeat. And yet, here we are. Between this massive miss and Brexit, I hope polling organizations put some work and thought into figuring out what went wrong and how to fix it. Or, if polling is broken past the point of fixing, come up with something to replace it.

2. I do not want to see a single TV segment, article, thinkpiece, Facebook post, or Tweet discussing the issue of low turnout (and it was VERY low for a presidential election, not much over 50%) that does not mention the Voting Rights Act. Voter suppression wasn't the only factor, of course. I don't want to oversimplify the situation. But 2016 was the first presidential election since the Supreme Court effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act, and the 2016 president-elect is a white nationalist. This is not a coincidence.

3. Relatedly, we white people have got to step up and own the truth that Trump is our problem. There is no way to shirk the blame anymore. I'm sure you've all seen the maps going around: how women voted, how Millennials voted, etc. But those maps are lacking some important context: no matter how you slice and dice the demographic data -- by age, by gender, by education, by income -- in every category, more white people voted for Trump, and more people of color voted for Clinton. (The only exception I could find was white college educated women, who just barely went for Clinton. That's a pretty narrow demographic.) None of us get to shirk responsibility on this one. We need to do a better job of educating our friends, our families. I know it's hard. I know it sometimes hurts, especially when it means confronting people we love. But it is long past time for us to step up. Although I'm still figuring out what this means in my own life, considering that I live in a pretty liberal, anti-racist bubble even among the white folks I know, including most of my family, I am committed to finding some way to do more.

4. In some respects, I'm not entirely sure where to go from here. I suspect a lot of people are feeling this way. It should not have taken the election of the worst presidential candidate in American history to be a wakeup call -- that's another mistake we need to own. But, again, here we are, and my preference is always to focus on what comes next. I hope the Democrats can manage to pull together and present a united front rather than lining up for the usual circular firing squad. Unfortunately, I've already seen a number of attempts to point fingers around inside the left. I'm not saying that it isn't useful to figure out what mistakes, if any, might have been made (see above re. polling). But if we are to fight for the future, and we MUST fight for the future, we need to do it together.

Stay safe, everyone. Mourn, heal, and get ready. Hillary Clinton may have lost the presidency, but I still believe we are Stronger Together. May that be her legacy, and may that be how we move forward.

Comments

[sathari]

So much yes.

"Relatedly, we white people have got to step up and own the truth that Trump is our problem. There is no way to shirk the blame anymore."

Yeah. And I am not sure how to pierce that one--- and I do not have the good fortune to live in an anti-racist circle at least in my wider community. And some of it frankly is making choices about my personal safety in the moment, with a given person--- and also how much of an effect my words will actually have, any more than theirs would have had on me. And on the flip side, looking for alternative avenues for activism--- well, I'm trying to get a collection of links/discussions of ways to Do Activism While Neurodivergent/Non-Normatively-Abled/Introverted going here (link is definitely for signal-boosting; right now we need to get the collection going at all, really, but I'm hoping to get the idea rolling, if not in the post itself then at least more generally.)

[owlmoose]

You might check out this Twitter thread from my friend Jenny. Good advice and support for confronting racism and white privilege in everyday life.

https://twitter.com/readingtheend/status/796730183655063552

[sathari]

Thank you! Very useful. Adding to my links list.

Pardon any ispell... phone comment ._.

[sarasa_cat]

From what I see around me, White Americans who, for the most part, left the interior of the America continent to come to the big coastal liberal cities believe in liberal egalitarianism (especially the college educated millennials) and that makes it very hard for them to talk about race or racial issues as they have many taboos about such speech. Not only do they not know how to talk about this stuff -- and focus on the shocking abstract injustices that happen to other people while remaining skeptical of their own participation in micro aggression and x-cultural discomfort -- they appear to feel that any talk about race is only something that POC do in academic terms or that their hometown interior-America "uneducated" white elders talk about. Thus, discourse on race is either "lower class" speech or it is something for academics. They appear to fear being "dragged into the lower class mud" once such talk touches on points that make them uncomfortable and that is when the "well, we don't talk that way" shield comes up and either they shut the talk down or do a flounce.

My point is that believing one lives in a liberal anti racist bubble -- which they do -- is actually a set of blinders. The entire society is racist and everyone no matter their color or ethnicity grows up steeped in it and all the unspoken classist taboos and misbeliefs that come with it.

And that means that learning how to talk about race and racism is one of the biggest cultural challenges that America faces over the next few decades.

It's going to be like getting 50% of America to learn to become fluent in a foreign language that most of hem literally fear learning.

Re: Pardon any ispell... phone comment ._.

[owlmoose]

I definitely have that experience around white liberal taboos on talking about race. Like many liberal whites of my generation, I was taught that "colorblindness" was the ultimate good where race issues were concerned, and I'm still unlearning that attitude, along with many other problematic attitudes that are harder to name quite so succinctly.

It's going to be like getting 50% of America to learn to become fluent in a foreign language that most of hem literally fear learning.

Pretty much, yeah. That's a good metaphor, and more than a little daunting. Not that we shouldn't try, of course. But's going to be a difficult road.

[lassarina]

This is such a good post.

I feel really weird about #1 because when I was looking at 538 pre-election, and I saw that 33% chance of Trump, I think that was honestly when I realized we were probably fucked. Maybe it was inherent pessimism. But I think I always thought this was a very realistic outcome, and as horrified as I am by that, I think it made it easier to be like "well that happened and now my worst-case fallback plans are ready to go."