That happened in the open. We knew what was going on at the time, and it was reported in real-time. But the election results were never in dispute. And the Russiagate conspiracies that the influence was deeper and wider and more sinister were baseless. These are really important distinctions to make. Because spreading misinformation doesn't help anyone.
I agree that a lot of the conspiracies about the election are coming out of a place of fear and disillusionment with the outcomes. Sure, there is Super PAC money and attempts at foreign influence. But there isn't much evidence that Russia Today got much from paying Tenet media. Just like the attempts to interfere in 2016 didn't actually mean interference. There is no evidence that the election wasn't free or fair. Same with the 2016 election. And the work remains the same regardless. Feeding into fears and paranoia fuels misinformation. There is a lot of reasons to distrust our systems, but election conspiracies are the red herring.
I agree with Beth4158. How many bomb threats were called in on election day in swing states? 13 was the last number I heard, but it may have been higher. The report I heard, said calls were traced to Russian callers. How many voters stayed home because of the bomb threats in those important precincts? We'll probably never know.
Also, Musk was to or over the line of election interference with $$ dangled in front of people to register on his site. How many votes did that effect? Hard to know.
I can see how people are suspicious of this year's election outcome.....
Disillusionment, for me, is a sort of death from nostalgia, what seems to matter is whether one resurrects into a simpler, thoughtful - albeit injured, limping even - life or comes back as a zombie, only able to destroy.
This is something a lot of us, including myself, need to absorb and accept. There is so much more comfort in the conspiracy explanation than what is really happening. It has given me a glimpse into the MAGA world and how they are so attracted to certain people who claim to have all the answers and will fix everything.
That's is some good insight. I've been thinking along similar lines. Not in a "both sidesy" way. But as in a better understanding of how when systems fail, we look for answers wherever they can be found. And I do think our systems failed us here.
my husband, ever the optimist, kept saying that he had faith in the american public. i did not. it seems to me that the great american public is the cause of the failure. they have voted and shown us who we are as a country. we are outnumbered and outmanoeuvred.
I agree that the American public is the primary cause of the failure (not the media or even the politicians although they certainly contributed). However I do look at one statistic (believing as I do that factual information is USUALLY the most likely to provide insights on the "why" of things) and it scares me. Many people have written about the triumph of the MAGA crazies but I don't see that at all. Virtually the same number of purple voted for Trump this year as did in 2020. There was no "surge" of anti-Biden or anti- Harris voting. This loss is almost totally attributable to a mental (and political) abandonment by our own supporters who just didn't vote. Harris lost 6-7 million of the voters that Biden won in 2024. That is the primary cause of the loss. In fact even with the popular vote loss, Harris could have still accomplished the same thing Trump did in 2016. With just a change of 200 thousand or so votes in just three states, Harris could have turned the tables and won what would have been a stunning election victory as unusual as Harry Truman's 1948 victory over Thomas Dewey while still losing the popular vote by 6+ million votes.
The Biden coalition collapsed in 2024, not going to Trump but simply staying home in large enough numbers to ensure Harris' defeat. In fact they didn't even really stay home , they still voted and often for Democrats, they just didn't vote for President.
This is the tragedy of 2024. We COULD have won this election but we (at least many millions of us) just chose not to. It isn't on the Trump voters who pretty much did the same as they did in 2020, or the media or even the dark money. It is essentially on us, the ones who simply decided to say "no, just not interested in this one. See ya next time. "
The tragedy in this is that this time, there may not be a "next time".
This. Whether it was the lack of support for Gaza or third party voters or sexism/racism or just apathy, people didn’t turn out to vote for Harris the way they did for Biden.
yes, Gaza certainly did nothing positive for turning out Harris voters. I heard most about Michigan & how many people there voted Jill Stein, or no vote - so sad....
thank you for this clarification. i agree. too many people chose not to vote or only voted down ballot. so now here we are. and we all have to pay for what has been bought. it's very sobering.
I think our systems have been failing since Reagan came to power. Fifty years of economic repression have killed the thing we need most: hope. People without hope are very dangerous and susceptible to the glimmer of hope a strong man promises.
Thank you for this. I see these theories, and it makes us look like the 2020 election deniers.
We lost, plain and simple. Part of it is likely the Bradley effect, and part of it is the close association with Biden and a general lack of knowledge of what Biden has accomplished.
The truth Americans don’t want to face is that the elections of 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, 2004, 2016, and 2024 show us exactly who we are: a country willing to embrace bigotry of a variety of forms, dedicated to violence at home and abroad, and comfortable with disgusting levels of inequality.
Even 1976, 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012, and 2020 show us to be entirely unwilling to do the hard work to enact systemic change, which is just what I’d expect from an electorate that’s composed of a mass of immiserated, and a minority of the comfortable. (The latter group includes me.)
The thing that is think you miss is that in most of the "democratic" win years there was in fact no real mandate for endemic change. Yes there were lots of voices on the left crying for that, but I believe of you really look at what happened in each of those elections you realize that the country as a whole didn't want radical change, just a return to normalcy. But unfortunately normalcy isn't sufficient to achieve the goal needed to penetrate throughout the voting population and so the opposition has been enabled to simply ratchet up its rhetoric and come back in 4 to 8 years and swing the pendulum back again. Ultimately people crave safety and security, not radical change even when it is needed.
And that is a dilemma that is way above my pay grade.
How can you tell the country doesn’t want change, if you never give them a chance to choose it?
How can “normal” possibly describe, for example our healthcare system, which is uniquely expensive and has uniquely poor outcomes, especially for maternal and infant mortality?
I refuse to believe that Americans don’t want a better deal just because the Clintons and Rahm Emmanuel say so.
Or that standing by during a genocide should be normal, as far as that goes.
I voted for less disgusting. I’d like a chance to vote for not disgusting.
I gotta say, this was one moment where the conspiracies made a bit of sense to me. Here's the reason why. NC went for Trump. It also went blue down almost the whole ballot. Governor, Lt. Governor (not a surprise), and on down the line. There's a chance a liberal judge won too. (There will be a recount, because it is like a 70 vote difference, with her currently winning) Statisticians will tell you how incredibly weird it is that a state went blue in numerous places down the ticket, but red at the top. (The reverse would have been odd as well).
The Lt. gov race was called like 20 minutes after polls closed because NO ONE wanted Robinson. NO ONE.
In 2016, when everything went red, NC governor went blue. Why? Because everyone hated Pat McCrory, the R candidate. But that was one spot out of a sea of red that just showed how much McCrory had pissed off the rich business people as mayor of Charlotte.
I think we ultimately lost because just enough white women were happy to vote against a black woman for president. They either 1. Voted for Trump or 2. Didn't vote the pres ticket.
That said, a whole lot of Trump voters are going to be really surprised when the leopard eats their face. They're too giddy "owning the libs" to see the leopard and his pack sharpening their teeth, but it's coming.
I’m in Arizona, where Trump won, but Ruben Gallego won his senate race. I imagine a lot of that boiled down to people being sick of Kari Lake. I imagine had the Arizona GOP run Not Kari Lake, Gallego may have lost.
I agree about the leopards, but (not saying you're a part of this - just pointing it out because I see it as part of the left's sore loser tendencies) I'm really dismayed by the number of lefties and progressives I see celebrating this. Let's leave the petty revenge seeking to Shitler and his enablers. The leopards are coming to eat all our faces, and I think it's time for solidarity, not schadenfreude.
Pennsylvania has had a lot of ticket splitting between President & Senate and statewide offices in recent elections, and even in statewide races alone (for example, in 2022, there were lots of voters who voted for Shapiro for Gov but Oz for Senate) so I think it is less unusual than folks may expect for there to be mixed outcomes. Candidate quality, racism, misogyny, local loyalties and other dynamics all play a role. This year was the first time there was a single party sweep of Pres, Senate and all PA statewide offices in quite some time.
Thank you for writing this. I've had a few friends suggest that this was a "stolen" election - wanting so badly to believe that this was not our own failure. But the reality is that lots of voters are perfectly willing to sell out other people for cheaper gas and groceries, and the Democrats were so dedicated to winning conservative votes that their messages didn't convince their own supporters to vote. This is the country we have. Either we fix it, or this is the country we get in the future.
Or maybe, just maybe, the Democrats were so dedicated to winning ALL of the voters, they failed to win the people who they needed to win. Your argument suggests that we went too far to the right and lost liberal voters and that is probably somewhat true, but we also lost many conservative voters of color and we lost many other conservative voters. I think we are missing a systemic failure on the part of Democrats as much if not more than a political failure. Biden's failure to acknowledge his unsatisfactory position with the voters a year before the election led to his refusal to back out until it was virtually impossible for Democrats to hold a viable primary to nominate a widely acceptable candidate. The result was 7 million 2020 Democratic voters walking out of the tent in protest (for varying reasons but the result was the same). Trump didn't win, we lost. And failure to understand why that happened is our potential future failure staring us in the face.
However, this thread from JACOBIN makes some good points...though I think they are a bit more critical of Biden than he deserved, if only a bit (I still think Biden did better than I would've expected, but indeed not quite enough better). https://x.com/jacobin/status/1859314194228838511
My partner is a high school English teacher and is currently working on media literacy with his class. He gave them an assignment to debunk something they find online, and he is giving extra credit if they choose to debunk something that they wanted to believe or reinforced their existing worldview. I wish he could be everyone's English teacher (especially my q-anon family :/).
I think there are lots of people who have, for almost ten years, made their personality to be anti-Trump in a way that isn't helpful, and a lot of them are in charge of the Democratic party. I've always distrusted other white people bc I grew up in a conservative place and watched people justify their votes not matching their morality, and I didn't start volunteering for Dems out of trust, but I think a lot of people do. They just want to be "right" they don't want to actually be a part of government (which is unglamorous and real work, no matter if a machine counts the ballot or not). Anyone who doesn't want you to understand nuance hasn't been to a neighborhood planning meeting, and doesn't want you to show up either
I think I (everyone?) kind of assumed like going back to the GOP autopsy report in 2012 that demographics are destiny and we were always going to pull these close ones out in the end and so on and so forth. So it is kind of a shock that it didn't happen, even though everyone has all these reasons that Harris winning was, at best, a coin-flip.
And, again, that it is Trump is so much worse because it's basically losing to a meme. It is cartoonishness and stupidity almost for its own sake, and it feels like there's no way to counter that with real policy and concern for real people.
A little tough love! Honestly it’s a relief to know all the conspiracies have been debunked, it’s sometimes tempting to take a bite of that apple. But I don’t want to be that person.
I think it’s easier to seek out conspiracy theories instead of admitting your worldview may not be as universal as previously thought. It’s also tough to admit that bubbles aren’t just limited to Fox News.
I probably did laugh at election deniers back in 2020 (and still think they’re ridiculous and storming the Capitol was insane), but I can see where that comes from now…
A lot - and I mean a LOT of people knew this is who we are, and have been repeatedly telling us. But as you noted, White people are going to white people. Some of it is backlash against the advances of social justice, some if it is deeply entrenched whiteness as property (C. Harris, 1993) that we don't want to concede. It was ever thus. I'm writing this as a white people. Communities are going to be where things change - but those of us who are white have a lot of self-work to do in terms of educating ourselves and listening when the people most adversely affected by all of the policies, Dem or Republican, speak up and push back.
I have been teaching using materials that share diverse perspectives (diverse including white people) for 20 years, and so frequently I hear white students describe people of color, Black people, and feminists as angry. They say that if these people would ask nicely, maybe they would make more progress. Ugh. Just ugh. I've had teacher candidates express concern about upsetting white parents - completely ignoring the fact that their teaching is harming Black, Brown, disabled, etc. children.
I could go on - but this isn't new, is my main point. MAGA isn't solely the problem. MAGA is just the latest iteration of a centuries-old issue.
I gotta keep grading research papers, but I'm so glad you posted this, Lyz.
I think there are terms in DEI education that trigger defensive responses and resistance to change: "privileged" and "oppression" are two. I have a retired white male friend (former military psychiatrist) who was bitching about this the other day - he said, "I don't know what they are talking about; I worked my ass off...." I recognize many, many ways in which I won the "lottery of life" but I absolutely resist being labeled an "oppressor."
It's less about taking the information personally and more about understanding how "winning the lottery of life" is more about whiteness than anything. Did you build the structure? No. But we benefit from it in a million different ways - hence the work of DEI, which seeks to level the playing field. It works across multiple identities, so race, gender, sexuality, ability, immigration status - all of these create obstacles that those of us who don't share those identities don't face. It isn't about identifying evil white people so much as dismantling structures that disadvantage people who aren't white. Joe Feagin writes about how foundational those structures are the the country, and how they get reified constantly.
Republicans successfully demonized DEI as "white people, males = bad, oppressors" who should feel guilty about their privilege. Of course, they mischaracterized lots of stuff; but this one resonated with many.
Russian attempts at election interference in 2016 didn't sway the outcomes. There is a lot of good journalism and research out there proving this point. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2023/1/20/23559214/russia-2016-election-trolls-study-email-hack
That happened in the open. We knew what was going on at the time, and it was reported in real-time. But the election results were never in dispute. And the Russiagate conspiracies that the influence was deeper and wider and more sinister were baseless. These are really important distinctions to make. Because spreading misinformation doesn't help anyone.
I agree that a lot of the conspiracies about the election are coming out of a place of fear and disillusionment with the outcomes. Sure, there is Super PAC money and attempts at foreign influence. But there isn't much evidence that Russia Today got much from paying Tenet media. Just like the attempts to interfere in 2016 didn't actually mean interference. There is no evidence that the election wasn't free or fair. Same with the 2016 election. And the work remains the same regardless. Feeding into fears and paranoia fuels misinformation. There is a lot of reasons to distrust our systems, but election conspiracies are the red herring.
I agree with Beth4158. How many bomb threats were called in on election day in swing states? 13 was the last number I heard, but it may have been higher. The report I heard, said calls were traced to Russian callers. How many voters stayed home because of the bomb threats in those important precincts? We'll probably never know.
Also, Musk was to or over the line of election interference with $$ dangled in front of people to register on his site. How many votes did that effect? Hard to know.
I can see how people are suspicious of this year's election outcome.....
There is no evidence for these hypotheses.
Disillusionment, for me, is a sort of death from nostalgia, what seems to matter is whether one resurrects into a simpler, thoughtful - albeit injured, limping even - life or comes back as a zombie, only able to destroy.
This is something a lot of us, including myself, need to absorb and accept. There is so much more comfort in the conspiracy explanation than what is really happening. It has given me a glimpse into the MAGA world and how they are so attracted to certain people who claim to have all the answers and will fix everything.
That's is some good insight. I've been thinking along similar lines. Not in a "both sidesy" way. But as in a better understanding of how when systems fail, we look for answers wherever they can be found. And I do think our systems failed us here.
my husband, ever the optimist, kept saying that he had faith in the american public. i did not. it seems to me that the great american public is the cause of the failure. they have voted and shown us who we are as a country. we are outnumbered and outmanoeuvred.
I don’t think it’s wrong to believe in goodness and hope but also phewww yeah
oh, i agree. it's just really hard right now.
I agree that the American public is the primary cause of the failure (not the media or even the politicians although they certainly contributed). However I do look at one statistic (believing as I do that factual information is USUALLY the most likely to provide insights on the "why" of things) and it scares me. Many people have written about the triumph of the MAGA crazies but I don't see that at all. Virtually the same number of purple voted for Trump this year as did in 2020. There was no "surge" of anti-Biden or anti- Harris voting. This loss is almost totally attributable to a mental (and political) abandonment by our own supporters who just didn't vote. Harris lost 6-7 million of the voters that Biden won in 2024. That is the primary cause of the loss. In fact even with the popular vote loss, Harris could have still accomplished the same thing Trump did in 2016. With just a change of 200 thousand or so votes in just three states, Harris could have turned the tables and won what would have been a stunning election victory as unusual as Harry Truman's 1948 victory over Thomas Dewey while still losing the popular vote by 6+ million votes.
The Biden coalition collapsed in 2024, not going to Trump but simply staying home in large enough numbers to ensure Harris' defeat. In fact they didn't even really stay home , they still voted and often for Democrats, they just didn't vote for President.
This is the tragedy of 2024. We COULD have won this election but we (at least many millions of us) just chose not to. It isn't on the Trump voters who pretty much did the same as they did in 2020, or the media or even the dark money. It is essentially on us, the ones who simply decided to say "no, just not interested in this one. See ya next time. "
The tragedy in this is that this time, there may not be a "next time".
This. Whether it was the lack of support for Gaza or third party voters or sexism/racism or just apathy, people didn’t turn out to vote for Harris the way they did for Biden.
yes, Gaza certainly did nothing positive for turning out Harris voters. I heard most about Michigan & how many people there voted Jill Stein, or no vote - so sad....
thank you for this clarification. i agree. too many people chose not to vote or only voted down ballot. so now here we are. and we all have to pay for what has been bought. it's very sobering.
I think our systems have been failing since Reagan came to power. Fifty years of economic repression have killed the thing we need most: hope. People without hope are very dangerous and susceptible to the glimmer of hope a strong man promises.
Thank you for this! I was seeing more conspiracy theories on Blue Dot Facebook pages, and got exhausted pushing back on them.
Thank you for this. I see these theories, and it makes us look like the 2020 election deniers.
We lost, plain and simple. Part of it is likely the Bradley effect, and part of it is the close association with Biden and a general lack of knowledge of what Biden has accomplished.
The truth Americans don’t want to face is that the elections of 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, 2004, 2016, and 2024 show us exactly who we are: a country willing to embrace bigotry of a variety of forms, dedicated to violence at home and abroad, and comfortable with disgusting levels of inequality.
Even 1976, 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012, and 2020 show us to be entirely unwilling to do the hard work to enact systemic change, which is just what I’d expect from an electorate that’s composed of a mass of immiserated, and a minority of the comfortable. (The latter group includes me.)
truth.
The thing that is think you miss is that in most of the "democratic" win years there was in fact no real mandate for endemic change. Yes there were lots of voices on the left crying for that, but I believe of you really look at what happened in each of those elections you realize that the country as a whole didn't want radical change, just a return to normalcy. But unfortunately normalcy isn't sufficient to achieve the goal needed to penetrate throughout the voting population and so the opposition has been enabled to simply ratchet up its rhetoric and come back in 4 to 8 years and swing the pendulum back again. Ultimately people crave safety and security, not radical change even when it is needed.
And that is a dilemma that is way above my pay grade.
How can you tell the country doesn’t want change, if you never give them a chance to choose it?
How can “normal” possibly describe, for example our healthcare system, which is uniquely expensive and has uniquely poor outcomes, especially for maternal and infant mortality?
I refuse to believe that Americans don’t want a better deal just because the Clintons and Rahm Emmanuel say so.
Or that standing by during a genocide should be normal, as far as that goes.
I voted for less disgusting. I’d like a chance to vote for not disgusting.
I gotta say, this was one moment where the conspiracies made a bit of sense to me. Here's the reason why. NC went for Trump. It also went blue down almost the whole ballot. Governor, Lt. Governor (not a surprise), and on down the line. There's a chance a liberal judge won too. (There will be a recount, because it is like a 70 vote difference, with her currently winning) Statisticians will tell you how incredibly weird it is that a state went blue in numerous places down the ticket, but red at the top. (The reverse would have been odd as well).
The Lt. gov race was called like 20 minutes after polls closed because NO ONE wanted Robinson. NO ONE.
In 2016, when everything went red, NC governor went blue. Why? Because everyone hated Pat McCrory, the R candidate. But that was one spot out of a sea of red that just showed how much McCrory had pissed off the rich business people as mayor of Charlotte.
I think we ultimately lost because just enough white women were happy to vote against a black woman for president. They either 1. Voted for Trump or 2. Didn't vote the pres ticket.
That said, a whole lot of Trump voters are going to be really surprised when the leopard eats their face. They're too giddy "owning the libs" to see the leopard and his pack sharpening their teeth, but it's coming.
I’m in Arizona, where Trump won, but Ruben Gallego won his senate race. I imagine a lot of that boiled down to people being sick of Kari Lake. I imagine had the Arizona GOP run Not Kari Lake, Gallego may have lost.
I agree about the leopards, but (not saying you're a part of this - just pointing it out because I see it as part of the left's sore loser tendencies) I'm really dismayed by the number of lefties and progressives I see celebrating this. Let's leave the petty revenge seeking to Shitler and his enablers. The leopards are coming to eat all our faces, and I think it's time for solidarity, not schadenfreude.
Pennsylvania has had a lot of ticket splitting between President & Senate and statewide offices in recent elections, and even in statewide races alone (for example, in 2022, there were lots of voters who voted for Shapiro for Gov but Oz for Senate) so I think it is less unusual than folks may expect for there to be mixed outcomes. Candidate quality, racism, misogyny, local loyalties and other dynamics all play a role. This year was the first time there was a single party sweep of Pres, Senate and all PA statewide offices in quite some time.
Thank you for writing this. I've had a few friends suggest that this was a "stolen" election - wanting so badly to believe that this was not our own failure. But the reality is that lots of voters are perfectly willing to sell out other people for cheaper gas and groceries, and the Democrats were so dedicated to winning conservative votes that their messages didn't convince their own supporters to vote. This is the country we have. Either we fix it, or this is the country we get in the future.
Or maybe, just maybe, the Democrats were so dedicated to winning ALL of the voters, they failed to win the people who they needed to win. Your argument suggests that we went too far to the right and lost liberal voters and that is probably somewhat true, but we also lost many conservative voters of color and we lost many other conservative voters. I think we are missing a systemic failure on the part of Democrats as much if not more than a political failure. Biden's failure to acknowledge his unsatisfactory position with the voters a year before the election led to his refusal to back out until it was virtually impossible for Democrats to hold a viable primary to nominate a widely acceptable candidate. The result was 7 million 2020 Democratic voters walking out of the tent in protest (for varying reasons but the result was the same). Trump didn't win, we lost. And failure to understand why that happened is our potential future failure staring us in the face.
However, this thread from JACOBIN makes some good points...though I think they are a bit more critical of Biden than he deserved, if only a bit (I still think Biden did better than I would've expected, but indeed not quite enough better). https://x.com/jacobin/status/1859314194228838511
My partner is a high school English teacher and is currently working on media literacy with his class. He gave them an assignment to debunk something they find online, and he is giving extra credit if they choose to debunk something that they wanted to believe or reinforced their existing worldview. I wish he could be everyone's English teacher (especially my q-anon family :/).
This is an incredible assignment
Give that teacher a prize!
I think there are lots of people who have, for almost ten years, made their personality to be anti-Trump in a way that isn't helpful, and a lot of them are in charge of the Democratic party. I've always distrusted other white people bc I grew up in a conservative place and watched people justify their votes not matching their morality, and I didn't start volunteering for Dems out of trust, but I think a lot of people do. They just want to be "right" they don't want to actually be a part of government (which is unglamorous and real work, no matter if a machine counts the ballot or not). Anyone who doesn't want you to understand nuance hasn't been to a neighborhood planning meeting, and doesn't want you to show up either
Also, this is an extension of the celebrity politician culture, which both sides rightly accuse the other of exploiting
I think I (everyone?) kind of assumed like going back to the GOP autopsy report in 2012 that demographics are destiny and we were always going to pull these close ones out in the end and so on and so forth. So it is kind of a shock that it didn't happen, even though everyone has all these reasons that Harris winning was, at best, a coin-flip.
And, again, that it is Trump is so much worse because it's basically losing to a meme. It is cartoonishness and stupidity almost for its own sake, and it feels like there's no way to counter that with real policy and concern for real people.
A little tough love! Honestly it’s a relief to know all the conspiracies have been debunked, it’s sometimes tempting to take a bite of that apple. But I don’t want to be that person.
Goddamn.
Enjoyed reading your comments on MSNBC this morning. Good for you on getting some national exposure.
I think it’s easier to seek out conspiracy theories instead of admitting your worldview may not be as universal as previously thought. It’s also tough to admit that bubbles aren’t just limited to Fox News.
I probably did laugh at election deniers back in 2020 (and still think they’re ridiculous and storming the Capitol was insane), but I can see where that comes from now…
Same it’s been a huge check for me. And also a reminder of how important it is to call it out
A lot - and I mean a LOT of people knew this is who we are, and have been repeatedly telling us. But as you noted, White people are going to white people. Some of it is backlash against the advances of social justice, some if it is deeply entrenched whiteness as property (C. Harris, 1993) that we don't want to concede. It was ever thus. I'm writing this as a white people. Communities are going to be where things change - but those of us who are white have a lot of self-work to do in terms of educating ourselves and listening when the people most adversely affected by all of the policies, Dem or Republican, speak up and push back.
I have been teaching using materials that share diverse perspectives (diverse including white people) for 20 years, and so frequently I hear white students describe people of color, Black people, and feminists as angry. They say that if these people would ask nicely, maybe they would make more progress. Ugh. Just ugh. I've had teacher candidates express concern about upsetting white parents - completely ignoring the fact that their teaching is harming Black, Brown, disabled, etc. children.
I could go on - but this isn't new, is my main point. MAGA isn't solely the problem. MAGA is just the latest iteration of a centuries-old issue.
I gotta keep grading research papers, but I'm so glad you posted this, Lyz.
I think there are terms in DEI education that trigger defensive responses and resistance to change: "privileged" and "oppression" are two. I have a retired white male friend (former military psychiatrist) who was bitching about this the other day - he said, "I don't know what they are talking about; I worked my ass off...." I recognize many, many ways in which I won the "lottery of life" but I absolutely resist being labeled an "oppressor."
It's less about taking the information personally and more about understanding how "winning the lottery of life" is more about whiteness than anything. Did you build the structure? No. But we benefit from it in a million different ways - hence the work of DEI, which seeks to level the playing field. It works across multiple identities, so race, gender, sexuality, ability, immigration status - all of these create obstacles that those of us who don't share those identities don't face. It isn't about identifying evil white people so much as dismantling structures that disadvantage people who aren't white. Joe Feagin writes about how foundational those structures are the the country, and how they get reified constantly.
thank you for this. exactly.
Thank you for your perspective.
Republicans successfully demonized DEI as "white people, males = bad, oppressors" who should feel guilty about their privilege. Of course, they mischaracterized lots of stuff; but this one resonated with many.