Donald Trump has won the 2024 election, and I, like many others, am saddened by it. However, there is one disgusting trend that white people have been doing: blaming Black and Brown people for lost elections.
So, just how did Kamala Harris lose the election? There are various factors at play, all complex in their own right, but the biggest and most straightforward reason: Misogynoir.
Misogynoir is basically racism + sexism but as uniquely applied to the experiences of Black women. Kamala, who is mixed race (Jamaican and Indian), thus experiences the penalties of being both a woman and non-white. Because of that, it’s much harder to promote her for president vs a white man without those penalties.
Despite that, many non-white people did vote for Kamala still. According to The Grio, most Black men and women voted for Kamala, with 78% of Black men casting their vote for her. And while a small portion of Black voters did vote for Trump, it was nowhere near the overwhelming amount that Democrats got from them.
And yet, this persistent myth that Black people did not vote for Kamala still exists among some white people. There’s a ton of misconceptions that Black and Brown men are innately sexist and would never vote for a woman, as the Twitter posts below suggest:
As the exit poll statistics show, these are all lies. And as a person of color, I am so exhausted at this dangerous rhetoric being passed around. There’s this idea that non-white men are inherently more misogynist than white men, which is why the “Black men voted for Trump” rhetoric beats louder than “Most white men voted for Trump.”
Non-white men are stereotyped as violent, cold, and not educated by white supremacist society. Unfortunately, these biases sometimes pass down to many everyday white people, who may make conscious or subconscious assumptions about POC based on that programming. This also means that white people sometimes assume that non-white men just aren’t educated enough to vote in their best interests or are too ignorant to be feminist or anti-misogyny.
Some of the most caring, thoughtful, and pro civil rights people I’ve met in my life have been non-white. More often than not, the anti-justice types that I experience tend to be white more than non-white. It was Black people who overwhelmingly voted for Hilary Clinton in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020, and Kamala in 2024, yet this narrative persists. Why?
I wish Kamala had won, and I am mad that she didn’t, but let’s not take our rage out on the vulnerable. Let’s come together as a people and fight back for our human rights and our democracy.
