We’re not gonna hold you, but we have some points for you to ponder
We established after the presidential election that Black women are tired, yes? We plan to approach things differently for a while.
Not putting the nation on our backs anymore. Not playing nice. Exploring the soft life. Focusing on ourselves instead of broadening the playing field for everybody. The 92% are gonna mind our sweet Black business for a while.
Even our forever first lady is with us: Michelle Obama conspicuously decided not to attend the second Donald Trump presidential inauguration, just days after skipping the funeral for former President Jimmy Carter, where she would’ve been seated next to Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris is showing signs of being on the bandwagon, too.
We’re not gonna hold you, because we’ve got a facial scheduled in an hour, but we do have a few points for you to ponder about who voted which way and why, and what we all should be doing for the future.
“Yes, it is sexism. Yes, it is racism. And yes, it is the very real reality that people are broke,” Cierra Hinton, founder of The Lorde Society, said Wednesday at “Covering a Divided Nation: Lessons from Black and Brown Media,” a covening of journalists and interested parties at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The event was sponsored by URL Media and the press club’s Journalism Institute.
Hinton, formerly publisher of URL partner Scalawag, spoke at the event as part of the “Listen to Black Women” panel, along with Lauren Williams, founder of Capital B; Jonquilyn Hill, host of Vox Media’s “Explain It to Me;” and WURD Radio president and URL Media co-founder Sara Lomax, who moderated.
WHAT HAPPENED IN NOVEMBER
The demographic breakdown of Trump voters shocked Black Americans who had hoped other members of the BIPOC coalition would overwhelmingly turn their backs on Trump as he sought the White House again. That’s not what happened.
The 92% of Black women who voted for Harris, and to a lesser extent the 83% of Black men who voted for her, have questioned whether others’ resistance to voting for her lay in policy issues or animosity toward her existing in high-powered politics as a Black and South Asian woman.
To be clear, votes don’t correlate 100% with hostility to Black people or women or South Asians. And Harris didn’t talk much about her identity on the campaign trail.
But the general consensus is that it certainly didn’t help.
“I still think that people don’t want to talk about the implications of a Black woman being the nominee,” said Williams. “If you look at any pundit give their laundry list of reasons why she
lost, they never want to give that one.”
People’s feelings about the state of their personal financial affairs motivated votes for Trump, too.
“I think what’s true historically in our nation is that in times when people are broke, they vote for Republicans, they vote for the conservative party,” said Hinton. “They believe that is the party that is going to put more money into their pockets.”
Hill concurred, adding that she’d spoken with a friend who responded to her confusion about election results with the statement “‘I can tell you do not interact with poor people on a regular basis.’ He tugged my wig a little bit with that one,” she said.
The Harris campaign also may have miscalculated by focusing so much energy on reproductive rights, which didn’t resonate with white women as deeply as some of Trump’s culture-war rhetoric did.
Trump and his allies have spent the better part of five years lobbing rhetorical bombs at programs that have been associated with the advancement of Black and Brown communities, including affirmative action, immigration laws and diversity initiatives. They’ve indicated that they want to turn back the clock on those programs as well as others that protect vulnerable marginalized communities from things such as environmental pollution.
So the next four years will probably be rough.
But we’ve faced rough before.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE TO FOCUS ON BLACK WOMEN AND COMMUNITIES NOW
“The landscape is changing, but the thing I know is, [our organizations have] been struggling forever,” Lomax said. “We know how to manage scarcity.”
The women said they’re focused on doing what it takes to support the communities they cover and provide them with the information they need to make informed choices.
“Meeting audiences where they are is so important,” Hill said.
That may mean using new tools or in-person events to reach audiences directly, and not depending so heavily on social media to reach readers.
“You have to take into consideration what may or may not be successful if you’re serving underserved communities,” Williams said.
All of these organizations need people to invest in them, both in time and money, in order for them to survive to fulfill their missions.
“My audience matters because I need to reach them, but also I need them to give me money, Hinton said.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Support Jonquilyn Hill by subscribing to “Explain It to Me,” anywhere you listen to podcasts.
“We have to spend our money with organizations that value our communities and our work,” Lomax said.
Subscribe to newsletters from URL Media, Capital B and WURD Radio.
More from “Covering A Divided Nation”:
