"Because They Think They Are White"
“But this cowardice, this necessity of justifying a totally false identity and of justifying what must be called a genocidal history, has placed everyone now living into the hands of the most ignorant and powerful people the world has ever seen. And how did they get that way? By deciding that they were white. By opting for safety instead of life. By persuading themselves that a Black child’s life meant nothing compared with a white child’s life. By abandoning their children to the things white men could buy. By informing their children that Black women, Black men, and Black children had no human integrity that those who call themselves white were bound to respect. And in this debasement and definition of Black people, they debased and defined themselves.
And have brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white.”
— James Baldwin, “On Being White and Other Lies” (1984)
From The Washington Post:
Black women and men continue to overwhelmingly support the Democratic nominee in this presidential election. This year and in 2020, roughly 9 in 10 Black women backed Harris and Biden, respectively. Although Democratic Party leaders expressed concern about Harris’s pre-election poll numbers among Black men, this group continued to support Harris at similar levels when compared with previous presidential elections. In both 2024 and 2020, about 8 in 10 Black men supported the Democratic presidential nominee.
In Michigan, Harris performed better among Black men; nearly 9 in 10 Black men in Michigan voted for Kamala Harris according to preliminary exit polls, roughly matching the share of Black women’s support in that state.
More Hispanic men supported Trump this year than in 2020, according to early exit polls. While 36 percent of Hispanic men voted for Trump in 2020, roughly half of Hispanic men voted for Trump in 2024. Trump’s support among Hispanic men was bolstered in states such as Texas and Florida, where Hispanic men accounted for more than a tenth of the electorate. In these states, nearly 2 in 3 Hispanic men backed the former president.
Among Hispanic women, Harris underperformed slightly. In 2020, nearly 7 in 10 Hispanic women backed Biden; this year about 6 in 10 Hispanic women supported Harris.
In Florida, Trump’s support among Hispanic voters was split by family origin. Roughly 7 in 10 Cuban Americans backed the former president, while a slim majority of Puerto Ricans supported Harris.
The media will be complicit in protecting the majority of white American voters from being labeled as the staunch and bred bigots that they are.
They will use euphemisms like “frustrated voters”—and leave them unnamed in any analysis like The Washington Post does above—to obscure the fact that the majority of white people knew that a vote for Trump would be a vote against Black people, Brown people, Asian people, queer people, trans people, disabled people, poor people, Black and Brown immigrants, Palestinians, children, the rights of women, unions, literature, art, the environment, and democracy.
But do not be fooled.
Trump’s predictable return to the presidency—in what is the final American presidential election of our lifetimes (a conservative plan decades in the making, with help from liberal complicity masquerading as incompetence)—was nothing more and nothing less than the majority of white voters confirming that they want to live in a country that adheres to the standards of living as expressed in 1824 rather than 2024. These were the actions of a craven, pessimistic people who are so fragile in mind, loveless in heart, absent in soul, but abundant in recklessness that they have willingly sacrificed themselves—and their own children—on the altar of a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist, whom they consider their messiah, in the hopes that he will deliver unto them an unabashed white supremacist h(e)aven where they can sacrifice us.
And trust me when I tell you: Whether they know it or not, white people have decided to sacrifice themselves and their children. Because the nature of being in a cult—and both whiteness and MAGA are nothing but cults—is that you will one day be called upon to meet your end at the behest of the false prophet you swore your allegiance to, whether you want to die or not.
The plantation has never really gone away, my people. It has merely been hiding in plain sight beneath the white majority’s falsehoods, platitudes, ploys, and homes.
We have been beaten by them today. But any joining with them is a suicide mission. White supremacists only let those they deem undesirable near them when they need a convenient footstool, scapegoat, or casualty.
The alternative to death, then, is liberty. And to achieve that we must first agree to never fucking surrender.
But many of us don’t even realize that we’re chained. I imagine we soon gon’ learn, though. And may that learning come through the act of breaking whatever shackles keep us locked away in the prisons of white folks’ own making.
Or ours.
“For the noose has already been hung.
The bond has already been broken.
The seen has already been foresaw.
The then is arriving now.
And nothing in creation able to stop the coming.
Nothing
except You.”
—Robert Jones, Jr., THE PROPHETS (2021)
Àṣẹ,
Robert