White People, Ya’ll Got Work to Do.

On Saturday, November 7, when the major news outlets finally called the election for Joe Biden, the 75,404,182 Americans who voted for him breathed a collective sigh of relief. The bells chimed in Paris. Fireworks went off in London. Americans in big cities and small towns joined impromptu celebrations. 

Well, except for the 70,903,094 U.S. citizens who voted for Trump. 

A friend was lamenting that her close friend voted for Trump. “I don’t understand it,” she said. “A group of us had weekly Zoom hangouts and we always talked about politics and how bad things were and how we were all voting for Joe Biden. She always nodded along and I just assumed she was voting Democrat, even though she’s always been a Republican. I didn’t want to outright ask her, because it would make things so awkward.” 

Sounds familiar, right? 

White Americans resoundingly voted for Trump again. They voted for racism, oppression, and inequity. They voted for separating babies from their mothers at the border. They voted for murdering Black men for no reason. They voted for the destruction of the planet. Many even voted against their own best interests. Why? Because their hatred runs that deep. And that’s the takeaway from the 2020 election: racism is alive and well in America.

We’re not interested in hearing the common, untrue refrains: low turnout among Black voters, an increase in Trump voters among communities of color, the need to appeal to working class whites. As Roxane Gay put it:

Too many white liberals will obsess over early exit polls indicating that 20% of Black men and a significant number of the overly broad categories of Latinos and Asians voted for Mr. Trump. They’ll do this instead of reckoning with how more white women voted for the president this time around and how white men remain the most significant demographic of his base. They will say that once more, Black women saved America from itself, which of course, we did, even though some things don’t deserve salvation… in this election, Black women, a population that required two Constitutional amendments and the Voting Rights Act to gain the franchise, have voted for Biden at a rate of 91% (New York Times, November 2020).

Meanwhile, 55% of white women voted for Trump this year.

When we as a nation repeatedly fail to stare violent racism in the face and call it what it is, we get Trump. He came to power because of white people who ardently bought into and mimicked his vile racism. But it wasn’t just that. He came to power because of the white people who consider themselves decent people, but who failed to hold their families, friends, colleagues, and communities accountable. To identify and call out their racism. To make it uncomfortable for them. To follow the notion that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. 

Every election cycle, this country has the audacity to blame marginalized communities for outcomes when it is those same marginalized communities, specifically Black communities, who have been driving radical, progressive change movements for decades. Even more specifically, Southern Black communities and organizers like the inimitable Stacey Abrams, Nse Ufot, and Helen Butler, who worked tirelessly to flip Georgia, a feat traditional Democrats never thought possible. The problem is not and never was Black voters or Latinx voters or young voters. The problem is and always has been white voters and a system that allows the white establishment to steal elections via the electoral college, voter suppression, and gerrymandering. 

And the root cause of that? Racism. Say it plainly. Speak its name. Because until we recognize why and how we got here, this will happen again. Trump will happen again. Except the next Trump will be even worse. The next Trump, like all super predators, will have adapted. And until there’s a reckoning in the white community about how racism drives and enables people like Trump, we are doomed to repeat our mistakes. 

So, white people, y’all got work to do. Your individual vote is not enough. Your individual decency and personal values are not enough. You need to do more. You need to engage in hard conversations with those around you. You need to put yourself in that uncomfortable situation. You need to rethink who deserves empathy, and who deserves consequences.

Consider this an invitation. An invitation for all well-meaning white Americans to put their good intentions to work. An invitation to take up the mantle that Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other POC folks have been carrying for so long. An invitation to have tough talks, set consequences for unchanged behavior and act on them, to give money to BIPOC-led organizations, and to continue the often-painful and challenging task of casting off the white supremacy that is so deeply ingrained  in all of us. 

On November 7, 2020, this nation got another chance to create a world we can be proud of. Organizers, people of color, grassroots movements--they’re already imagining it, they’re already building it. White people, it’s time you listen to these communities and it’s time you get to work.