Brian F. Schaffner, et al, “Explaining White Polarization in the 2016 Vote for President: The Sobering Role of Racism and Sexism,” Conference on The US Elections of 2016, January 8-9, 2017.49
“Trump was the first modern Republican to win the nomination based on racial prejudice. And, yes, racial resentment does more to explain support for Trump than even ideology . . . [W]hites with strong racist attitudes turned much more sharply Republican following Obama’s election, including some who had previously been Democrats . . . Republicans spent the past half-century winning over socially conservative, non-college-educated whites on issues of race and identity . . . With little else to hold the party together, Republican leaders doubled down on these issues.”
Lee Drutman, “How Race and Identity Became the Central Dividing Line in American Politics,” Vox.com, August 30, 2016.50
It takes a moment for Corey’s words to sink in. The endless studies that Imogen won’t stop sending me come flooding in in their wake.
I don’t know what my face looks like. I know I manage to shut my mouth and will my face into poker stillness, but my guess is I’m a paler shade of white. Evidently, it’s obvious that Corey has managed to slip the knife under my ribs because he eyes me for a moment and then a slow smile spreads across his face.
He can’t know I voted for Stein or that I’m working towards Delgado’s victory. He might suspect, but he can’t know. He probably thinks he’s upended my Silicon Valley elitist view of how the world should work and my importance in it. What he does know with certainty is that over the course of this conversation, he has made me a very unhappy man.
Which means he wins.
It’s all I can do not to lurch across the desk and strangle the self-satisfied look off his ugly face. I can see my hands gripping his thick neck, the tendons standing out in my forearms. I watch the flush of gin blossoms on his cheeks turn from red to purple, watch his beady eyes bulge out of his head, the blood roaring in my ears.
Evidently, I don’t keep these thoughts off my face either, because Corey levers his bulk out of the chair with a little chuckle. He saunters out of my office with a parting shot: “I guess my work here is done.”
I sit in my office and stare at the door I slammed on Corey’s retreating back.
I was wrong.
The evidence is convincing that the O-O-T voter voted for Trump because of his racism and sexism. There is no racist bridge-too-far for these voters. A Democratic jobs message is not bringing these voters back. Pundits’ exhortations to Democrats that they need to focus on this group is misguided at best.51, 52 Honestly, it’s probably evidence that Republicans don’t have a lock on race and gender bias.
It’s true that calling O-O-T voters out on their racism is unlikely to bring them back into the fold. But pandering to them makes the Democratic party complicit in their racism and sexism.
God bless America, land that I love.
I could weep.
But I’m dancing around the heart of the matter.
I was wrong and I employed and let loose a monster in California’s 10th Congressional District. I may have done irreparable harm.
Chickenshit that I am, I’m still dancing.
Votes for Stein were as important as O-O-T votes. Morally, my vote for Jill Stein elected Donald Trump. My vote for Jill Stein is evidence of my gender bias. My focus on the O-O-T voter was misguided. My focus on the O-O-T voter is evidence of my persistent gender bias.
There. I said it. Now I have to see if there’s a way to fix it.
46
Crow
Tuesday, October 30th, seven days until the midterms
I take a deep breath and call Imogen on her cell phone. It rings four times, and just as I think she’s going to let it go to voicemail, she picks up.
“Yes.”
No ‘Hello,’ no ‘Hi, Iz,’ or even just ‘Iz.’
“Hey,” I say.
And she says . . . nothing.
“Are you there?” I check.
“Yes.”
“Are you going to say anything besides ‘yes’?”
“I’m waiting to hear what you have to say.”
Nothing with Imogen is ever easy. But then, she isn’t the one in the wrong.
“Fair enough.” I shut my eyes, then open them. “Darryl didn’t vote for Trump because he thought he was going to get a mining job.”
After a beat, she says, “I wouldn’t think so.” But her voice is neutral, flat.
“Not to say Darryl doesn’t care about jobs. He does. But if a jobs program was Darryl’s number-one priority, well, Clinton was the one with a forty-page plan. Trump just had slogans. But Trump’s slogans—miners, manufacturing—featured one thing in common: white visuals. Clinton’s materials, on the other hand, were a problem for the O-O-T voter. The problem wasn’t that they didn’t have any visuals of white men, they did. The problem was that they also had visuals of black, brown, and female people.”
“Ye–ah,” says Imogen, in a two-note, I-can-see-that way.
Now that I’ve started, I might as well keep going.
“Darryl didn’t vote for Trump because he thought Trump could get rid of the individual health insurance mandate and retain pre-existing conditions protection for everybody.”
“Well, he’d have to be an idiot to believe that,” she says. But again, her tone is milder than her words. More than anything, she just sounds really tired.
“Yeah, the numbers just don’t add up. But if you exclude Mexicans, who are all rapists, and Muslims, who are all terrorists, and Chinese, who are currency manipulators, and The Blacks, and anybody with a pussy to grab, well then, then the arithmetic gets a little easier.
“It all makes so much sense. Like when Darryl and I talked about small government, he went on and on about how great a guy his dad was, as a father, as a neighbor, as a worker. The point he was trying to make was that his dad had deserved his Social Security disability benefits. That he had earned them. What I didn’t get at the time was that the whole point of telling me those stories was to show that his dad was different from other recipients of aid, like for example, those undeserving, shiftless blacks.”
“Did he say ‘shiftless blacks’?!”
“No, and he never would. And from Darryl’s perspective, it makes a certain emotional sense. Because you could bring yourself to vote for Obama, and because you don’t use words like nigger, spic, or pussy, you think that’s proof you’re not a racist. But you are still really tired of hearing about the tribulations of those people. You say Trump’s a little rough around the edges, that you don’t approve of Trump’s trashing of minority groups and women, but it’s not like you don’t notice that he’s attacked a lot of folks. And who does that leave? All Trump’s trash talk is proof that when Trump says ‘Make America Great Again,’ that’s shorthand for ‘Make America Great Again for White Men.’”
“That’s definitely the way I’ve always translated MAGA,” says Imogen.
Which, when you think about it, pretty much amounts to ‘I told you so,’ without using those exact words. Of course, she did tell me so.
I plow on. “But the fact that Darryl isn’t about to go burn a cross on the lawn of his nearest African American neighbor doesn’t mean he isn’t perfectly happy, even eager, to balance the budget by excluding black, brown, and female people from safety net programs. And that’s what Corey says. Corey says Darryl voted for Trump because he thought Trump would turn America into a welfare state just for whites.”
She doesn’t say anything, but the quality of the silence is different.
I say, “Darryl will never cop to it, but he didn’t vote for Donald Trump despite the racism and sexism. He voted for him because of the racism and sexism.”
“Yeah,” she says, sadly. “So what now?”
“I think I need your help.”
“What do you need?”
“Well, you know RAPAC’s Dangerous World ad?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re running a new version of it. With Tamir Rice.”
“With Tamir Rice? I don’t get it.”
“With Tamir Rice included with the criminals and the terrorists. Like an unarmed, twelve-year-old African American boy shot to death by cops is a criminal because all African Americans are threats and criminals.”
Silence. Followed by, “Oh. Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Where are you?”
“At the office, but I can be at the apartment in fifteen minutes.”
“I’m on my way.”
47
Endangered Species 6
Tuesday, October 30th, seven days until the midterms
The billboard has been updated again.
“Hispanics and Blacks, SHUT UP about racial profiling, police shootings, and widening wage gaps. Stop complaining about making 22 to 34% less than white men with the same education, experience, etc.53
That’s nothing! White Men are killing tens of thousands of themselves. Save the White Man! Vote Democratic.”
Now there’s a web address beneath the SWM logo: www.swm.space.
I beat Imogen home.
I open my laptop and look up the website. It doesn’t look like a typical candidate or party website; it’s not red, white, and blue, with graphics of flags or capital buildings. Like the billboard, it’s predominantly black and white. Like the billboard, the design is clearly influenced by designs like the old Silence Equals Death poster. It shrieks protest.
It’s Triggering the Libs on Steroids.
Finally, it makes a certain sort of sense to me. I’ve been keeping bad company. I couldn’t get past the fact that the Republican base loves it when Trump triggers the libs. I lost sight of the fact that it’s also true that liberals get triggered. Triggered to protest, to volunteer, to register, and to vote. If Trump can trigger progressive activism, maybe Imogen can ’roid it up a notch.
I hear Imogen’s key in the lock, and then she’s standing with her back against the closed door. The overhead light in the entrance is off, and her face is in shadow.
“‘Save the White Man. Vote Democratic.’ Nice,” I say.
She doesn’t say anything, so after a moment I say, “Nice website too.”
“Are you fucking with me?” she says, her voice low, half-strangled.
“What? No! I think it’s really great. It’s trigger the libs to the nth degree, trigger the libs to get out and vote.”
She crosses into the living room light on her way to the kitchen island. She looks rough, her eyes puffy, almost like she’s been crying. She rests her bag on the island.
“Sylvia kicked me off the campaign,” she says baldly.
“What!? Why?”
“She found out Save the White Man was me. She was furious I hadn’t cleared it with her. She said reverse race baiting is still race baiting, and the last thing this country needs right now.”
Imogen can’t seem to stand still. She paces back and forth in the kitchen, a space about six feet long. It brings to mind a rat in a cage.
“It’s such fucking bullshit! It’s not like the billboard is any more inflammatory than stuff we say to each other in the campaign every goddammed day. Why can’t we be honest about it? And it’s not like I don’t contribute to the campaign in ten million other ways. Seriously, I don’t think there is another person in Modesto who has knocked on more doors than I have!”
“Oh, Mo. I’m so sorry. You’ve been working so hard to get Delgado elected. I’m sorry she didn’t appreciate all you were doing for her.”
She pauses and looks at me, tears overflowing, making pale streaks on her cheeks. She crosses into the living room and subsides onto the couch next to me, using the long sleeve of her shirt to wipe her face.
“But it’s not just that. Sylvia said Save the White Man is just a symptom. She thinks I swanned in here with my one-percenter coastal elite savior mentality and thought I should be calling the shots. Like I think locals, and especially Latinas, don’t know their own minds, their own priorities, their own communities.”
She leans forward and puts her face in her hands, a convulsion passing through her. I reach out to pat her on the back. She takes her hands down and looks at me. Her face is wet again.
“Oh, Iz. The thing is? She’s right!”
Her mouth crumples with trying not to cry, and tears roll down her cheeks.
“Aw, Mo.”
I put an arm around her, and she tucks her head into my shoulder with a shudder.
“I mean, Delgado wasn’t right about everything. You’re not a one-percenter. I’m a one-percenter. You’re maybe a five-percenter. Maybe.”
That earns me a laugh, a wet snotty laugh, but still a laugh. I also get an “Iz!” coupled with a punch in the shoulder.
I hand her the Kleenex box, and she pulls herself together and does a bunch of really wet-sounding nose blowing.
I guess it’s my turn.
I say, “I was thinking about Joe Biden, after you brought him up the other day. About how a lot of Democrats, in particular white, male Democrats, think Joe Biden should have run against Trump. To be honest, I’ve thought it myself.”
I take a deep breath and continue, “I went back and watched some of the Anita Hill testimony during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings. Joe Biden was an absolute shit to Anita Hill. He kept other women from testifying—he was a racist, misogynist shit. And we barely talk about it. But we talk about how Hillary Clinton backed her husband, when he said he’d been faithful, like she’s an utter skank. Some folks close to the Clintons believe she didn’t know at first. That she believed him and was trying to protect him. But either way, she was in a terrible position, dealing with allegations against her husband.
“But Biden had no such personal dilemma, no such emotional involvement to cloud his judgment. He just decided to use his power as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to go after a victim of sexual harassment and destroy her credibility because she, an African American woman, had the audacity to suggest that she be treated like a human being in the workplace. Biden’s behavior on the committee is utterly unforgivable.”
Imogen stares at me with the Kleenex pressed to her nose, her eyes flooding again.
“You were right, Imogen. I defended Darryl because if Darryl’s vote was defensible, then so was mine. I held Hillary Clinton to a different standard. I let my bias influence my vote. I’m really sorry.”
48
Plan of Action
Tuesday, October 30th, seven days until the midterms
We get a bite to eat. We make coffee. It’s time to figure out where we are and what can be done.
“Sixty-three million Americans were willing to put this beautiful country in the hands of an admitted racist and sexual predator, a disgusting clown of a man. By and large, in the face of incompetence and endlessly repulsive behavior, they stand by him.” I rub my hands over my face, then turn to look at Imogen. “Is this our country?”
She stares back.
“Yes. President Trump is proof of how virulent American racism and American misogyny still are. But it’s not the whole story.” She leans in. “More Americans cast a vote for Hillary Clinton. Clinton beat Trump in the popular vote. By a lot.”
“What about the six million Obama-to-Trump voters?”
“They’re racist misogynists. Of differing degrees, but still, they are racist misogynists.”
Her voice is gentle, the voice of someone breaking bad news, someone comforting the bereaved.
“There’s nothing that will bring the O-O-T voter to his senses?”
“No. I’m sorry, but I really don’t think so, Iz. He’d have to own what he’d done, who he is. Most people, once they’ve made a mistake, they don’t own it. Just the opposite: they double down.”
It’s not that I don’t see her point. Maybe I’m naïve, but I can’t accept that so many of our fellow citizens are unsalvageable.
“We all have bias, Imogen. Every human
being has biases. Racism isn’t binary—there are degrees. If we make it binary, we make it impossible to distinguish between neo-Nazis and people who look at race in America and think that we’ve come far, maybe far enough.”
She looks at me like she’s listening for something, like the sound of an approaching train, but can’t quite hear it. Still, she’s trying.
She says, “After Tamir Rice, you think people who think we’ve come far enough on race in America aren’t racist? They think the shooting of unarmed black men and children is okay, and you think they’re not racist? Saying they’re focused on how far we’ve come is just a way of sanitizing, whitewashing their racism, Iz.”
“Yes. I think it’s racist. But Imogen, I also think that someone who is maybe a little willfully blind about the killing of unarmed black men—maybe she doesn’t read the news coverage, maybe she thinks we need to have faith in our policemen—that woman, I think she’s different from a Klan member or a neo-Nazi.”
She’s chewing her lower lip.
“Mo. C’mon. Recognizing that all the dear-old-Trump-voting-Auntie-Ems are different from neo-Nazis is not normalizing Auntie Em’s Trump vote.”
I play my last card.
“What about me, Imogen? Think what it took for me to admit I judged Hillary Clinton by a different standard, that I . . . didn’t vote for Secretary Clinton because of her gender. Am I Harvey Weinstein? Am I Donald Trump?”
Her eyes are tearing up again. She says, “No, Iz. You’re no Harvey Weinstein. I’ve known Harveys and you’re a million miles from being a Harvey.”
She takes a deep breath.
“And the sweet-old-Auntie-Ems aren’t neo-Nazis. The fact that my Auntie Em voted for Trump doesn’t nullify all the love and affection she showed me as a kid. But by the same token, all the love and affection she’s shown for me over the years doesn’t nullify her complicity in the deaths of all the Trayvon Martins: she’s not a neo-Nazi, but she is complicit in the continuing horrors of racism in America.”
Rules of Resistance Page 18