Dear White Women: Let’s PLEASE Not Be Stupid This Time
“White women had doubts. They voted for Trump anyway.”
That subtitle quote is the headline of a 2020 article whose own subtitle read:
They said they didn’t like the president’s rhetoric, his handling of the pandemic. But in the end, they came home.
They came home? THEY CAME HOME?? Tell me, white women, wtf does that mean? What “home” did/does Donald J. Trump provide for you? I really want to know because I cannot fathom, in any part of my completely functioning brain, how that man feels like “home” to anyone, much less a woman. Flocking to him for “home” is like throwing yourself into the ocean and thinking you can breathe. It’s self-sabotage. It’s a form of suicide. It’s dumb as fuck.
But here are more head-shaking statistics from John-John Williams IV of the Boston Banner, whose title made me stuff my fist in my mouth to keep from screaming: Will white women vote for Kamala Harris? History says it’s unlikely
Only twice since 1950 have a majority of white women voted for a Democratic presidential candidate — Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton. They didn’t support Barack Obama in his two historic terms as the nation’s first Black president. And they didn’t help elect Hillary Rodham Clinton as the nation’s first woman president.
Instead, they supported Trump over the former secretary of state 47% to 45%, according to Pew Research. Four years later, Trump’s share of white women voters increased to 53% in his unsuccessful reelection bid against President Joe Biden. [Emphasis mine. Read his whole article. It’s a cold water dip.]
OK, let me sit back for a minute, take a few deep breaths, and say this with all sincerity: I am so sorry, America. As a white woman I feel compelled to apologize for all white woman because that’s a horrible bunch of statistics, all of which have had a deleterious effect on all women, all people, and could have, would have, been avoided if white women had stepped up and voted with good sense and an actual conscience.
I don’t understand my racial/gender demographic. I’ve been a white woman my entire adult life and those statistics fly in the face of everything I think, feel, and believe, what every single white woman I know thinks, feels, and believes, so it’s clear there’s a whole mess of white women out there who don’t think, feel, and believe the way I, my friends, family, and acquaintances do, and these women are doing us all dirty.
While watching the fabulous DNC last week I was struck by (and vigorously applauded) the repeated emphases on “decency” and the mandate to make it a priority, much needed directive after years of the Trump camp (and click-lapping media) normalizing indecency as if it was a cool new fad like bad AI photographs and suburban tattoos. One of my first articles on Substack tackled the topic: Despite Trends to the Contrary…truth and decency still matter, and daily I ponder how and why our standards of decency plummeted to such subterranean depths that the vile postings of Trump, et al., with their smarmy insults, sophomoric name-calling, sexist denigrations, and unintelligent, upper-case rantings are not deal-breakers for intelligent people, including (especially?) intelligent women. Yet seemingly, statistically, the majority of white women ignore, dismiss; giggle at this garbage and continue to “come home” to this man. I wanna know why.
• Is the pervasiveness of their privilege so engrained that these white women can’t see, feel, imagine, empathize with the impact and damage of a crude authoritarian like Trump, particularly on BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, immigrants; women?
• Are these the kind of white women who abdicate all decisions to their husbands/boyfriends, and those husbands/boyfriends are fist pumping, red hat wearing “I’m the man of the house” type Trump bros?
• Perhaps it’s about “belief with blinders”: white women who are religious fundamentalists or indoctrinated Christians of whatever sect who believe that, despite his clear criminality and amorality, Trump was “chosen by God so all is forgiven.” (I got a little sick writing that.)
• I’d guess — by virtue of countless interviews and news stories I’ve seen — that many are declared/undeclared white supremacists and xenophobes who simply despise the Democratic “big tent” agenda of diversity and inclusion and for whom Trump represents their racist worldviews.
• There’s a high probability many are wealthy white women who see Trump and Republicans in general as defenders of their stock portfolios and tax cuts, fuck the rest of humanity.
• Or mid-to-low-income, small-town, Fox News-watching white women who’ve been so thoroughly indoctrinated by propagandist blather that they’ve bought the lie that Democrats are elitists who don’t care about them and their lives, and somehow a gold-toilet-swaggering-supposed-billionaire does (go figure).
• Or maybe it’s white women who just love a big, blowhard bully who crashes the party, pushes weaker men around, and makes even weaker women weak in the knees (that one made me a little queasy too).
I could go on, but I imagine much/all/some of this list applies to any white woman who’d actually find it in her cold little misguided heart to vote for Donald Trump. If there are other, less creepy, reasons, let me know. I’m interested.
See, the problem for me is that I can’t fathom what answers and solutions to the needs and plights of the American woman — of any race or ethnicity — the Trump/Republican Party provides. Perhaps there was a time when avuncular Ronald Reagan or the “good ole boy” Bushes made that contingent feel cared for or seen or considered, but with Trump? It’s either cognitive dissonance, undiluted delusion, or clinical insanity.
So. What to do. In the first week after the great and gracious Joe Biden stepped out of the race and endorsed Kamala Harris, I got an email from a friend of mine, a very outspoken and politically active Black woman. She forwarded me the call-to-action link to the online gathering, “White Women: Answer the Call. Show Up for Kamala Harris,” with the challenge: “Are you gonna show up for this? Are you gonna get your white girlfriends to show up for this? Wake up, sis, it’s your turn now.” And she wasn’t fooling around. She made the point that Black women have stepped up, election after election, to meet their civic duty and elect Democrats, and it was well past time that white women joined them in doing the right thing. And she is correct; it’s well supported by statistics that Black women are considered “the saving grace of the Democratic Party”; her challenge had both gravitas and history to back it up.
I did show up. And with a friend. A white woman. We were traveling together with our husbands, so we sat in their room at the B&B where we were staying, computer up, ears perked, eyes focused, credit cards out. We couldn’t get on the Zoom (attendance was so enthusiastic the platform crashed!), but we hopped on the YouTube stream, watching, listening, and donating from there. It was a powerful, electrifying event, and, in turns out, the harbinger of many more to come; there was even a “Swifties for Kamala Kickoff Call” this past Tuesday and I’d guess a lot of those attendees were white women.
One hates to break these historical moments down to race and gender, but this happens to be the moment we’re in and there’s no point being squeamish about it. It’s been said enough times that this is “the most important election of our lifetimes,” and while one could roll their eyes at that (“Aren’t they all?”), in this case, given the man on the other side, the dangerous agenda he and his cabal of autocratic miscreants are pushing; the potential devastation of that agenda on the fundamental rights and freedoms of all humans, we white women need to step outside expected norms, flout those hideous statistics about us as a group, and commit to this to-do list:
- Reject any dug-in, knee-jerk “white woman” impulses and instead get fiercely candid about our more basic identities as conscious, humane, empathetic members of society.
- Put aside any single-issue allegiances we may feel beholden to and prioritize the greater good… for the greater good.
- Reach out to all the white women in our circles (family, friends, colleagues, co-workers, etc.) to shake up, inspire, invite, even (if you have to) guilt into examining and/or reexamining their voting philosophy with an eye toward sparking compassion, consideration, and voting Democrat.
- Really grasp the urgency of the moment, the need of the moment, for our demographic to change the metric, the statistics, attached to us, and join with our Black sisters to “be the saving grace of the Democratic Party” — and democracy as a whole — by electing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
I will be in that group. I presume every white woman I know will be in that group (yes, ladies??). And I hope the majority of all white women around the country will be in this group. Cuz I’ve got my sights set on proving those statistics about us white gals to be wildly inaccurate this time.
SIDEBAR: In my particular world, it’s not every day you get a notice informing you there’s now a Spotify radio station under your name, but it seems there is. As a longtime singer/songwriter for whom it’s been a long time since boatloads of people were paying attention to my music, it was heartening to learn this fact, as it hopefully means more people will find, listen to, and enjoy my songs. Even better, they’re tucked into a playlist with some of my very favorite songs and singer/songwriters, and there’s nothing better than being in good company. I invite you to click, listen, and enjoy!
ALSO: A fellow author friend of mine, Ann Werner, a woman I’ve never met in person but for whom I’ve been an “early reader” for her three-part book series, After the Apocalypse, just released the third book of that series, The Adepts, and I wanted to give it, and her, a shout-out. As I said in my review of the book, I’m not typically drawn to post-apocalyptic narratives, nor am I a fan of series in general, but I find her writing to be emotionally engaging, with fully-realized characters, and intriguing plot lines that both connect the three books and allow them to be read as stand-alones. I’m aware of how difficult it can be for indie authors self-publishing their books to get the attention and readership they deserve, as well as I know the unique challenges of being a not-famous woman of a certain age in the very challenging industry of book publishing (I am one of those too!), so I’m happy to shine whatever little light I can on Ann and her book. I encourage you to click for a copy, and enjoy the read!
