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.