After Trump's win, Black women are rethinking their role as America's reliable political organizers
After Trump's win, Black women are rethinking their role as America's reliable political organizers
Donald Trump's victory has dismayed many politically engaged Black women, and they're reassessing their enthusiasm for politics and organizing.
Summary
After Donald Trump’s 2024 victory, many politically engaged Black women are reassessing their role as key organizers in U.S. democracy.
Despite 92% supporting Kamala Harris, Black women expressed disillusionment over their contributions being met with indifference.
Historically at the forefront of social change, some are now prioritizing rest and mental health, shifting away from the “backbone” role in movements.
While some fear this withdrawal could leave gaps in advocacy, others argue it’s time for other groups to step up, as Black women grapple with the nation’s lack of solidarity with their concerns.
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“It’s like the people have spoken and this is what America looks like,” said Smith, the Los Angeles-based founder of the advocacy social media agency, Get Social. “And there’s not too much more fighting that you’re going to be able to do without losing your own sanity.”
definitely a real feeling
it is what America has been looking like for far too long
I've seen it described as when you spend time and energy helping a friend get away from an abusive ex, only to see them get back together
“Giving up” when you lost the last election by a measly 1.5% seems like exactly the wrong thing to do…
1.5% in an election by a well-spoken (relatively) young and intelligent experienced government official, running against a psychotic retiree-age fascist with apparent dementia, a room-temperature IQ, with a history of sex scandals and rape (as confirmed by the courts, no less) while running as the candidate for Christianity and moral purity, running in stark opposition to both the free market and the welfare state, openly despising women, ethnic, religious, and gender minorities, advocating for genocide, bootlicking our national enemies, and corruption... all with a prior four-year term with all of that on display, so we all could be certain it wasn't 'just rhetoric'.
There are only a few realistic conclusions one can potentially draw from that.
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Most of America simply does not give a shit about what happens to minorities.
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Most of America wants bad fucking things to happen to minorities.
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America was so freaked out at the prospect of a mixed-race woman becoming president they decided what happens to minorities was less important than stopping that.
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Any combination of the above.
There's not a lot of room for "Well, I get that they wanted a 2.5% lower tax rate on the rich..." This was an election against outright fascism. And most voters said "Yeah, let's go with that."
Many people that voted for Trump did so because Fox news said to, or Newsmax, or their family, or Joe Rogan, or Elon Musk, etc. The right has a vast disinformation network that hand waves or disputes all of those facts. It's all bullshit of course and anyone who digs into it at all would realize that. Nobody has managed to put a dent in that disinformation silo. People who were super into conspiracy theories ignored all of the actual shenanigans and chose to believe stupid shit that fit their bias.
At this point their entire identity is built around a pack of lies. The cognitive dissonance is layered on so thick they have a sound bite dead end for any question. If they chose to believe the truth it would mean that they're the worst kind of idiot and have actively been a puppet and a piece of shit for at least 8 years. They can't admit that kind of failure. The moral injury is too great.
So what would have to happen is some sort of scandal that exposed all of their media silos and revealed something unbearable by their dear leader. That would give them the escape hatch to admit being fooled, but fooled by a masterful conspiracy that nobody could have seen through. That sort of event is such a high bar I don't know what would do it.
A lot of his supporters won't survive him breaking both social security, Medicare, and most other federal institutions. They'll have a maga flag at the funeral too.
Maybe his inevitable demise will happen sooner than later. You'd think they planned for that, but they've been pants on head stupid at everything else and blundered into success for so long I doubt it.
That 1.5% would probably be explained by Harris's very real flaws you're ignoring right now. Harris's campaign was a massive middle finger to the working class, so she didn't get votes. Trump was at least saying he'd do things for the working class, so he got votes.
This was an election against outright fascism.
Most voters demonstrably don't care about that. They care about what candidate will do for them and to that Harris said "haha nothing get fucked".
Trump got more votes in 2020 than in 2016 by a large margin. Don't forget the pandemic was still in full swing in 2020. In 2024 more people voted for him than 2020.
Whatever their reasoning, people are looking at this guy and they like what they see.
You're leaving out election tampering. At the very least there was rampant voter suppression, but there's data being found that points to actual fraud.
The win wasn’t about any culture related stuff, don’t spread that idea.
People voting republican will always be stupider on average, and they genuinely believed that the tariffs were going to help them.
All of this is related to the economy, which retail execs helped worsen because of price increases. It’s all economic pressures being painted as cultural stuff.
The culture war is a distraction, the only real thing is the class war. Once people have better economic conditions, they’re flexible on sorts of social progress. Look at the Nordic countries ffs.
Countries which want to save themselves from fascism and oligarchs should implement the Nordic model at scale.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model
Edit to remove judgmental tone
Not disagreeing with anything you’re bring up, I just feel that 1.5% is small enough that the next election could easily swing the other way, unless the organizers give up en masse. Then we’re surely fucked.
I'm only saying that being demoralized by this whole shitshow is an entirely reasonable reaction, especially from minority groups.
There are only a few realistic conclusions one can potentially draw from that.
You would rather believe conclusions that suggest the party should abandon minorities entirely than consider for an instant that Democrats' decades-old strategy of moving to the right has failed.
Yes, abandoning minorities is definitely what I suggested, good going, top-tier literacy. /s
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It's not too different from the oxygen masks on an airliner: secure your own mask first before you help others. You always have to make sure you're healthy and well first, and then you can focus on taking care of business.
Given the blow to morale this had, I have nothing against people that need to take a break for their own wellbeing. I don't think most are permanently out of the game though.