Millions of people worked
as hard as they possibly could to turn the country onto a different
path and still the village idiot was elected.
What to make of such an outcome? What do we know about the participation of
women of color at the polls? Did women of color and White women move in the
same political direction? And how do the results inform women's rights and
racial justice activists about the critical tasks ahead?
It's an exceptionally bitter pill, but we must swallow it whole. The November
balloting, a referendum on an aggressively militaristic foreign policy, defiant
of the most basic human rights norms, was a stunning setback for peace and
progress. No real alternative course of action was offered by a cowed and strategically
bankrupt opposition party. But it is still the case that, given the choice
between delusional, reckless empire building and the faint possibility of a
more measured approach to world affairs a majority of the electorate chose
the former. They also chose to reinstate an administration that promotes massive
disinvestment from communities of color, a bold assertion of patriarchal values
in public policy, and privatization of every last scrap of social capital.
There are nearly as many theories about how we arrived at this outcome as there
are voters. But we can be clear about at least one thing. Had it been up to
women-of-color voters, the current resident of the White House would be packing
his bags and heading back to Texas.
 According to CNN exit polls based on over 13,000 respondents, Bush received
62 percent and Kerry 37 percent of the vote from White men. Fifty-five percent
of White women voted for Bush, while 44 percent voted for Kerry. Only thirty
percent of men of color voted for Bush, while 67 percent of them voted for
Kerry. Most significantly, 75 percent of women of color voted for Kerry, which
means less than one-quarter of women of color supported the current administration's
policies.
The voting patterns of women of color led the trends in our communities,
which voted heavily Democratic. Bush received only 11 percent
of Black votes. Unsettled
controversies remain regarding the Asian American and Latina/o vote, but
Bush received a decided minority of votes in these communities
as well. An estimated
24 to 34 percent of Asian American voters and 33 percent to 40 percent of
Latina/o voters supported Bush. A substantial majority of Arab
American voters also
cast their ballots for change. Native American figures are not available.
 Much has been made of the gender gap in US elections. Organizations stake
their political strategies and their income streams on the margins between
male and
female voters. The gender gap refers to the difference in the percentage
of women and men who vote for a given candidate, and to the tendency
of women
to vote more heavily Democratic than men. On November 2, 48 percent of women
versus 55 percent of men voted to re-elect Bush. However, despite the administration's
record, Bush gained 5 percentage points among women from 2000 to 2004. The
Republican victory can be attributed, in no small part, to an increase in
women's support. Where did this support come from?
While some statistics talk to us, others virtually scream out for interpretation.
Let's contemplate, for a moment, the Mississippi vote, where White women
and non-White women voted in an exact mirror image of each other. A jaw-dropping
89 percent of White women in the state voted for Dubya, while 89 percent
of
Black women voted for Kerry. This margin of difference along racial lines
was widest in Mississippi, but gaps of 50-60 percentage points were common
in the
Southern states, and the national divergence between White women and women
of color settled in at 31 percentage points: 55 percent of White women voted
for Bush while 24 percent of women of color did. A single-minded focus on
the gender gap sidesteps this troubling reality.
Does it make sense for feminists to give their entire attention
on the 5-10 percent electoral gap between women and men  and none
to the 30-80
percent gap
between women of color and white women? What are the strategic consequences
of that focus?
If we are striving for reality-based politics, and we certainly cannot
afford to do otherwise at this moment in history, we will conduct a
deep inquiry into
why and how women's political thinking diverges so profoundly along the
colorline. What motivated a majority of White women, especially in
the South, to identify
their interests so thoroughly with those of the Republican Party? How we
can begin to bridge the racial chasm in US politics to further a progressive
agenda?
There are no ready answers to these lines of inquiry. But perhaps pursuing
them honestly will jog us out of denial for long enough to think creatively
about how to approach the bleak four years ahead. Linda Burnham is the Executive Director
of the Women
of Color Resource Center in Oakland, CA. She helped coordinate
the Count Every Vote initiative in the South. |
