Black women voted for white women — and white women voted for themselves

By LaSha from Salon.com

(Credit: Getty/Chip Somodevilla)

From the time she officially announced her candidacy, I had been adamant that I would not vote for Hillary Clinton. Whatever common experiences we shared because of our womanhood were not enough to make me overlook my legitimate concerns over her political positions and history. I’m a black woman. There was no amount of resentment for Clinton that would have made me vote for Donald Trump. No, I was not with her, but I wasn’t even on the same planet as him.

That Donald Trump, with no prior political experience, was elected to the highest office of the most powerful country on earth was shocking. What exit poll data revealed was utterly astounding. More than half of the white women who voted — 53 percent — had voted for Donald Trump.

White women had everything to gain, or at least maintain, by electing Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Beyond the historical significance of electing the first woman — a white woman — president of the United States, Clinton’s policies would have no doubt been more female-friendly than Trump’s, who has said he would appoint pro-life Supreme Court justices in a signal of support for overturning Roe v. Wade, and has even argued that women should suffer punishment for having abortions. Trump has an unabashedly misogynist constituency to appease. That appeasement will most likely come at the cost of women’s rights.

But still, white women, across borders of income and education, supported him…Racist white women held firm to the fact that they may be women — oppressed, marginalized and preyed upon — but at least they’re still white. Trump, in coded language, promised to preserve that whiteness. He promised them that even fighting for the right to make choices for their own bodies and paid less, they’d still have the power of their whiteness.

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