Racism in the United States is astonishing. As a non-American, until Obama’s time, I used to think that, there was just some institutional racism left over from past decades and a few extremists in the South—but not much else. After Obama, it’s incredible how most white people have become extremely right-wing extremists, all because of a single president of mixed descent. Now, the problem seems enormous, and a solution doesn’t appear to be anywhere in sight.
I’m a white American from the northeast and I felt the same way. When trump won the first time, it felt like I’d just discovered that the floor underneath my bed was rotting away.
I was blind to it because I didn’t need to see it, but it was always there. My relative privilege insulated me and ensured that I contributed to the problem
I am from Boston, northeast has always been super racist and still is.
We just hide our racism by using different words, like 'those people'. Go to any town/city meeting and you will see 50% of the people going up to talk about their 'concerns' using phrases like that. It's all very veiled and vague, for sure, but it's incredibly obvious what they mean. Being racist here is 100% cool as long as you are not doing it directly.
And hell, most of my white progressive anti-racists friends, are very very uncomfortable around non-white people. I had the 'privileged' of growing up a lower-income mixed race community, but most of my peers have zero experience with non-white people.
Well yeah, but there’s also naked and aggressive racism, like lynchings, for example, that I just didn’t notice before. I mentioned where I’m from because I also thought that only happened “in the south.”
Neither is acceptable, to be clear, and both happen all over the US, tragically.
As an American I feel exactly the same. There absolutely were holdouts of racism, but I felt we were moving forward and leaving them behind. Obama’s presidency set the stage, then trump and covid set everything on fire and the mask came off. “Draining the swamp” just meant revealing the scum at the bottom of it and setting it free. I was shocked at how many racist, petty, selfish, aggressively ignorant people there are in the US.
Seeing Americans label Obama as the most “divisive” president was eye opening…
Meanwhile, Trump was saying Obama isn’t even a US citizen! All while specific persons are saying Obama is dividing the nation…
It’s disgusting…
After Obama, it’s incredible how most white people have become extremely right-wing extremists
That hasn’t been my anecdotal observation. Obama’s election definitely freaked out the existing White racists and motivated them to get more politically active, but I haven’t seen non-racist Whites suddenly become racist because a Black man finally got elected president. Where are you seeing this? Better yet, is there research or polling data documenting it?
I think it's more that a lot of racists hid it rather than openly reveling in it like they do now.
I'd be more interested to see how many more/less white/black women voted red/blue compared to previous years rather than the ratio of those who did.
That kind of contextual information is useful, but beware of anybody giving it to you without the bigger context of absolute numbers before and after. Liberal media loves using shifts like this to imply there's a bunch of centrists who decided to change which way they're leaning instead of "dems failed to improve the material conditions for their constituents, so fewer people voted dem. Meanwhile 12 black business owners voted republican instead of 6, an increase of 100%"
In 2016, CNN and MSNBC spent months using that type of framing to blame black people for Hillary's loss, essentially calling them ungrateful, homophobic, sexist, conservatives.
a lot of black people are homophobic, sexist, and conservative. and racist.
both things can be true.
this idea that black people are all progressive liberals is just a projection from white progressive liberals complete lack of interaction with people outside their little enclaves. they aren't.
black voters are largely democratic, yes, but they are typically not progressives on social issues.
What everyone forgot, esp on the Dem/liberal side, is you win by buying a coalition of voters around various issues on which they can find some mutual ground. Which is exactly what Trump did in '16 and '20 and the Democrats did with Obama in '08 and '12.
Trump focused on the border, economy, and other rhetoric around which a lot of people found common interest. And racism was one of those interests. Many Hispanic voters also wanted the border closed. My Asian friends parents were Trump supporters, because they were anti-immigration. They were first gen immigrant and they hate new Asian immigrants coming here.
US feminism is mostly centering on the issues of white, middle-class women, failing to fully integrate the needs of women of color, marginalized, or lower-income women. This lack of a unified approach leads to fragmented advocacy and fragmented outcomes, rather than a broad movement.
Also 53% of white women vote for trump compared to 7% of black women who voted for trump. This showed that they gave more priority to racial identify over collective welfare of all women in usa .
White feminist often ignore or won't acknowledge that in usa —specifically land ownership and early capital accumulation were built upon the exploitation of Native American and African people.
The systematic removal of Native Americans from their land provided massive amounts of property that was subsequently passed down through generations of white families, serving as a primary source of generational wealth which black women or native American women doesn't have.
The wealth generated by the labor of enslaved African people in agriculture and other industries directly enriched white slaveholders and, by extension, their present generation . Jim crows law curbed wealth generation for black women compared to white women
Wealth disparity between Black and white women in the USA is severe, with white households holding nearly 10 times the median net worth of Black households, or approximately 15 cents for every dollar. Black women face lower income, less intergenerational wealth, lower homeownership rates, and higher debt, often keeping them in lower-wage service jobs without benefits.
white feminists often ignore these issues Best example would be :-1)DEI
Despite DEI mostly benefitted white women , most of the white feminist organisation ignored whether black women benefitted or not .they doesn't cared about native American or black women . They often fail to view things from racial angle by focusing just on gender angle
2)Most of the educational scholarships are benefitted by white women over native American ,black women
US feminism is mostly centering on the issues of white, middle-class women, failing to fully integrate the needs of women of color, marginalized, or lower-income women.
Literally the only feminism I've heard about for the past 10 years is intersectional feminism.
Also 53% of white women vote for trump compared to 7% of black women who voted for trump. This showed that they gave more priority to racial identify over collective welfare of all women in usa .
Very much a just-so story. Imo, a far more reasonable interpretation breaks voting patterns along tribal identity, while most women voting care about more things than the very amorphous "collective welfare of all women". Interesting to note that 38% of latina voters voted for Trump, a statistic strangely absent from your argument...
White feminist often ignore or won’t acknowledge that in usa —specifically land ownership and early capital accumulation were built upon the exploitation of Native American and African people.
I have never met a single self-identifying feminist who would not agree with this to some extent.
The wealth generated by the labor of enslaved African people in agriculture and other industries directly enriched white slaveholders and, by extension, their present generation .
I think Adam Smith would have a lot to say about this. Specifically, he would probably point out that the slave states really had an awfully small economy compared to the free states, and that most of the wealth generation which occurred in the US occurred due to productivity gains driven by technological innovations which were most aggressively exploited in the north. In the long run, few people could claim to have really benefitted noticeably from american slavery - it was just a shitty thing to do for no reason.
Despite DEI mostly benefitted white women
I mean, from the pro-DEI arguments I keep hearing on lemmy, DEI seems to mostly involve removing names from resumes before they are rejected by AI or something. But I wouldn't be surprised if this critique had merit - most people who benefit from adding footholds inside the system are people who know how to work the system.
2)Most of the educational scholarships are benefitted by white women over native American ,black women
I really don't have anything to say to this, because it feels like you kind of just shut down in the middle of a rant. Are you okay? Did you have a stroke?
I think Adam Smith would have a lot to say about this. Specifically, he would probably point out that the slave states really had an awfully small economy compared to the free states, and that most of the wealth generation which occurred in the US occurred due to productivity gains driven by technological innovations which were most aggressively exploited in the north. In the long run, few people could claim to have really benefitted noticeably from american slavery - it was just a shitty thing to do for no reason.
Some historians appear to agree with additional support. During the 18th century, the slave economy was significant in the expansion of industry & commerce, but its value declined & was no longer needed by the 19th century. Slave-intensive sugar production that dominated the 18th century became less important in the 19th century as shipment of cotton products to international markets grew in significance. Unlike sugar, cotton had less need for slaves, and early cotton growers used slaves primarily because they were already slave-owners.
Insurgent scholars known as New Historians of Capitalism argue that slavery, specifically slave-grown cotton, was critical for the rise of the U.S. economy in the 19th century. In contrast, I argued that although industrial capitalism needed cheap cotton, cheap cotton did not need slavery. Unlike sugar, cotton required no large investments of fixed capital and could be cultivated efficiently at any scale, in locations that would have been settled by free farmers in the absence of slavery. Early mainland cotton growers deployed slave labour not because of its productivity or aptness for the new crop, but because they were already slave owners, searching for profitable alternatives to tobacco, indigo, and other declining crops. Slavery was, in effect, a ‘pre-existing condition’ for the 19th-century American South.
Slavery restrained economic development of the south, causing it to underperform economically: while it unevenly concentrated the lesser wealth produced there, the lesser wealth produced there benefitted the rest of the economy less than it could have. Free states didn't benefit from the less wealth concentrated elsewhere.
To be sure, U.S. cotton did indeed rise ‘on the backs of slaves’, and no cliometric counterfactual can gainsay this brute fact of history. But it is doubtful that this brutal system served the long-run interests of textile producers in Lancashire and New England, as many of them recognized at the time. As argued here, the slave South underperformed as a world cotton supplier, for three distinct though related reasons: in 1807 the region closed the African slave trade, yet failed to recruit free migrants, making labour supply inelastic; slave owners neglected transportation infrastructure, leaving large sections of potential cotton land on the margins of commercial agriculture; and because of the fixed-cost character of slavery, even large plantations aimed at self-sufficiency in foodstuffs, limiting the region’s overall degree of market specialization. The best evidence that slavery was not essential for cotton supply is demonstrated by what happened when slavery ended. After war and emancipation, merchants and railroads flooded into the southeast, enticing previously isolated farm areas into the cotton economy. Production in plantation areas gradually recovered, but the biggest source of new cotton came from white farmers in the Piedmont. When the dust settled in the 1880s, India, Egypt, and slave-using Brazil had retreated from world markets, and the price of cotton in Liverpool returned to its antebellum level. See Figure 2.
Specifically, he would probably point out that the slave states really had an awfully small economy compared to the free states,
Both things can be true though. The money from black slaves flowed into the pockets of white slaveowners AND it was economically a very dumb move.
If I steal a thousand bucks, and lose nine hundred and fifty while running away, I haven't benefited much, but that doesn't change the damage inflicted.
I completely agree.
My point is that saying I am rich because my grandfather snatched your grandmonther's purse 70 years ago isn't true if that purse had $0.70 and an empty snickers wrapper in it. Yes, the damage to the other is real, but not the supposed benefits afterward.
Your comment completely completely proves what white feminism is , that's the lack of accountability and no consideration of rights of minority
Even United Nations acknowledge the need to move beyond white feminism :-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_feminism
Adam smith point of view won't work here cause black people even after abolishment of slavery were not allowed to participate in economy in efficient way . Productivity of economy benefited only white people for wealth generation .. In case black people if became successful,they were torn downed to the ground Best example would be what happened to black wall street and how it got destroyed during Tulsa massacre
Your comment completely completely proves what white feminism is
That would be really weird, considering I don't even really consider myself to be a feminist. Sure, on any given policy position I agree with them.... but it's kind of like MtG. Sure, you might think MtG is fun - but you don't want to admit to being an MtG player too early in a relationship, lest you get lumped into all the other MtG players. You know the ones.
Adam smith point of view won’t work here
Adam Smith literally wrote The Wealth of Nations, in part, to explain why Spain wasn't the richest country in the world after they stole a shit ton of gold from some brown people.
White people today aren't rich because of wealth they accumulated from exploiting brown people, because that wealth doesn't accumulate over time. They are wealthy because they participated in a system with strong, stable institutions which created technological innovation.
Brown people didn't benefit as much from this creation of wealth because they were excluded from the formal and informal social networks and opportunities which would have provided them the means to earn and accumulate wealth, and sometimes had their own wealth, social networks, and social opportunities destroyed. Which was, to be clear, a dick move. But it is not the same dick move that is being described above.
What you said is right , without industrialization there won't be any rise in economic prosperity, but at the same time
if you look at present day Spanish colonies , much of the property , farmlands of high real estate value are majorly owned by descendants of white people over present generation of black people or native Americans tribes .
Another example would be australia, much of the wealthy real estate , farmlands and property are owned by white people , they got this wealth and property from there ancestors. How there ancestors got this were by displacement of aborginal people from fertile , beach side lands
That means present generation of white people in australia benefit from having high net worth properties , fertile farmlands whereas present day descendants of aborginal people only have dried land and have properties of low real estate value .
This is one of the Main thing causing disparity in australia, same thing would be applicable for usa where white people own majority of property, wealthy farmland . Also Black people were curbed via Jim crows law which were made by white supremists to curb rise of black traders eventually leads to more economic inequality .
Jealous white supremists destroyed black wall street during Tulsa massacre
1)"Literally the only feminism I’ve heard about for the past 10 years is intersectional feminism."
Actions speaks more than words , Unlike Scandinavian countries where feminists became so inclusive that they heavily prioritised welfare and empowerment of minority women belonging to Sami tribe community Whereas in United States , everything is just in words not in action. Also the percentage of white women voting for trump increased in United States shows what is the state of intersectionality in United States compared to Nordic countries,
2)"Very much a just-so story. Imo, a far more reasonable interpretation breaks voting patterns along tribal identity, while most women voting care about more things than the very amorphous “collective welfare of all women”. Interesting to note that 38% of latina voters voted for Trump, a statistic strangely absent from your argument"
Exactly—voting is shaped by identity. That’s the point. The large gap between white and Black women voters shows that “women” are not a unified political group, and race often outweighs gender solidarity in practice. Bringing up Latina voters actually strengthens the argument—different groups of women have different lived realities and priorities. So main stream white feminists avoided problems of minorities despite making claims of suport for intersectionality
3)"I have never met a single self-identifying feminist who would not agree with this to some extent."
Acknowledging history isn’t the same as centering it. The critique is that these histories are often treated as background context rather than shaping current feminist priorities and policy focus.
4)"I think Adam Smith would have a lot to say about this. Specifically, he would probably point out that the slave states really had an awfully small economy compared to the free states, and that most of the wealth generation which occurred in the US occurred due to productivity gains driven by technological innovations which were most aggressively exploited in the north. In the long run, few people could claim to have really benefitted noticeably from american slavery - it was just a shitty thing to do for no reason."
That’s a very selective reading. slavery was deeply integrated into early American capitalism—financing, banking, and global trade . The effects didn’t just disappear; they shaped wealth distribution and institutions long-term. Jim crows laws also disadvantaged black people in economic wealth creation , most of the black workers during this period didn't had an opportunity to generate assets unlike white people. productivity gains driven by technological innovations mostly benefitted white people because of restrictions for participation of black people in the economy
5)"I mean, from the pro-DEI arguments I keep hearing on lemmy, DEI seems to mostly involve removing names from resumes before they are rejected by AI or something. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this critique had merit - most people who benefit from adding footholds inside the system are people who know how to work the system."
Yes—and that’s precisely the critique. When structural inequalities aren’t addressed, benefits often flow to those already closer to power like white women rather than the most marginalized groups.
6)"I really don’t have anything to say to this, because it feels like you kind of just shut down in the middle of a rant. Are you okay? Did you have a stroke?"
Dismissing the point doesn’t address it. There’s research showing that diversity initiatives and educational access programs often disproportionately benefit white women compared to more marginalized groups. That’s a structural outcome worth examining, not ignoring.
It's crazy how you got downvoted despite having good counter points ..
How does this explain 39% of Latina women voting for trump?
Latina people are white , Colombia is the best example , were most of the Latina people like to identify as white over mestizo or black identity.
Most of the Latina people identify more as white than black or mestizo
I'm thinking many people who voted for Trump did not love everything about him, such as the racism, but settled for him for other varied reasons.
46% of Latinos voted for trump. We really need to battle the billionaire owned propaganda Machine
I don't think Latinos are idiots who believe whatever they read. I think they're generally as smart as any other racial group, and they possess the ability to think critically and make informed decisions. I have spoken with many Latinos who voted for Trump. I think many people don't understand that Mexicans and South Americans are generally socially and fiscally conservative. They're often Christian and have strong proletarian work ethics.
https://newrepublic.com/post/188061/white-women-harris-trump-exit-polls
Donald Trump has won the majority of white women voters for the third straight time
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-11-07/white-women-vote-donald-trump-kamala-harris
There’s no mystery. White women handed Trump the election
The answer isn’t that deep: The majority of white women in this country want a male president — preferably white. That’s not me talking; that’s nearly a century of voting data speaking.
Nothing more disgusting than a woman or minority that votes conservative.
What kind of human enjoys having a boot on their neck?
Disclaimer: the following is just my opinion and not to be taken as gospel. This is not financial advice.
The hope for them is that one day, after proving their ability to suffer a boot upon their neck, they will have proved themselves worthy to put their boot on someone's neck.
How does one perpetuate slavery?
Turn some of the slaves into masters.
I mean, if it's the right person, in the right boot, at the right time. That could be a fun Friday night. Don't shame my, albeit hypothetical, kink.
I was informed repeatedly that its all the white men who voted for Trump and it's all their fault. You saying that ain't totally true?
Lemmy users don't realise just how popular Trump was in the 2024 election.
Trump won 15% of black voters in 2024, up from 8% in 2020 and 6% in 2016.
21% of black men voted for Trump in 2024. Both black men and black women were both more likely to back Trump in 2024 than in 2020.
Trump won nearly half of voters aged 18 to 29 in 2024, versus about one-third in 2020.
49% of men under 50 voted for Trump in 2024, versus 43% in 2020. That group went from backing Biden by 10 points in 2020 to being essentially split in 2024, with Trump holding a narrow edge.
Trump reached 48% of Hispanic voters in 2024, up from 36% in 2020. Harris won Hispanics by only 3 points, compared with Biden’s 25-point advantage in 2020.
Trump received 77,302,580 votes in 2024 - 2.5 million more than in 2020 and 14.3 million more than 2016.
Trump won 49.80% of the national vote and he became the first Republican nominee in 20 years to win the popular vote.
Trump won 312 electoral votes in 2024 vs 232 in 2020 and 304 in 2016. In state terms, that works out to roughly 31 states in 2024, up from 25 states in 2020 and slightly above his 30 states in 2016.
Trump won a bigger share of the vote in every state and Washington, D.C. than he did in 2020, and won more actual votes in 40 states.
In 2024, Trump took all of the seven most competitive states.
I don't attribute this to Trump's political prowess, but the ability for the Democrats to unwaveringly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Imagine how bad they had to be to lose to Trump. Their commitment to taking the 20% side of every 80/20 issues will be studied for decades. This wasn't rocket science. Whatever your views, letting in 10M+ illegal immigrants in four years was a deeply unpopular policy. So was their permissive approach to crime and acceptance of racial discrimination (as long as the victims were the right color).
I hope they don't make the same mistakes in 2028 but the current selection of candidates is not making me hopeful. Trump is doing his best to lose voters so I fear 2028 will be yet another choice of "who do you hate least?" The US really needs electoral reform. The two party system has resulted in complacent, bloated, arrogant parties which seem to care very little for the interests of the people. Entire books have been written on the broken primary structure alone, which requires placating the more extreme elements of each respective base just to get a shot at the presidency. This inevitably results in candidates from both sides which the other side cannot stand.
Liberals like to conveniently forget that being a white woman is also a very privileged position in our society.
Most White women want to maintain their privileged position too.
That assumes they recognize the class struggle.
The problem can be exceptionalism.
Where the person thinks they started from nothing no matter how elevated their position was.
This leads to the thought that anyone below them didn't try as hard as they did and any attempts to uplift will belittle their accomplishments.
Messaging must maintain the uplifting of the entire working class. Then they will support you because the self interested have something to gain.
Not to downplay womens sufferage and sexism (because it was wrong) but a substantial portion of straight white women act like they have had it every bit as bad as the truly persecuted and enslaved. Like sure, your great great grandmother didnt have the right to vote, while she was sipping lemonade on the verandah of the plantation while the people her husband owned worked the fields and cleaned the house.
You might not have been allowed to drive the car, but you got driven places you wanted to go in it.
Not sure which number makes me more depressed.
It's easier to scare people when they have no idea what's reasonable to be scared of
Can we stop this "it actually goes back to" argument style.
Look I understand that racism is very entrenched in America from its very beginning, just like every other country on Earth. To frame an argument like that is to say through subtext that no act of reformation can ever be enough.
It reframes humans as inherently ignorant which I hope we all know isn't the case, any of us who know better only do so because we were taught to think critically.
I understand it's important to have historical context when defining issues of race and inequity but the issue comes from it being a way to sweep all talk of change under the rug.
It also gives current figures moral cover by saying that no one person is specifically responsible, letting any recent figures off the hook when they're very culpable. It frames racism as an issue of human nature which it may be but it's in tandem with ignorance, something only some of us were able to escape because of education.
It's weaponizing historical context to take away our feeling of agency which is something that has been a tactic on the right and particularly in Russia for years.
Racist rhetoric didn't begin with Trump but the scale, centrality, and normalization is like no other.
Deep roots should never be a way to absolve recent actors. So while I think historical framing is important, I think it's also important that we're mindful we don't weaponize it to both belittle our progress and erase the possibility for change.
Of course the system has systemic inequality and racism, of course we should work to change that and we should use historical context to identify the disadvantages that have been given to people and how we can fix them. But in the meantime we can still hold the people here and now accountable for what they have done to accelerate the normalization of direct racist tones.
To spend your life tracing only original sin would be to miss the nuance of how it's evolved.
One of the most important pieces of Trump's 2024 election was getting the Hispanic vote. Sure, he spent years before, during, and after his first term talking about cracking down on immigration on the southern border, talking about how all of the people coming from Mexico or further south were a bunch of criminals and drug dealers. BUT he courted the Cuban population in southern Florida - mostly the descendants of people who were wealthy enough to have their wealth redistributed by Castro. By calling Harris a communist he was able to get their votes, win Florida, and that would have made the difference in the election.
The very concept of who counts as "white" changes depending on what the racists of the time want. In the not-too-distant past, Irish and Italian people were not considered white. I still don't know if Bernie Sanders or other Jews are considered white or not.
Even for data like this... Is it really a black women vs white women issue, or is it a rich person vs poor person issue? And yes, those economic division have deep roots in the history of racism, but that doesn't explain the whole picture.
Look at the people around Trump. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is one of those Cuban south Floridians. Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer is a Hispanic woman. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is part Samoan, born in Somoa. FBI Director Kash Patel is Indian - his family fled persecution in Uganada.
And then there's foreign policy. Trump seems to largely be pushing the USA away from predominantly white European countries that have historically been allies. Trying to break up NATO and undermine the EU, making threats against Canada and Greenland. Cozying up to Muhammed Bin Salman.
The people in power love when the masses fight amongst themselves.
Didn't a significant portion of black men also vote for Trump? Or was that just the Latinos?
21% of black men voted for trump
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