Many Democratic voters went to bed Tuesday night despondent and angry, knowing Trump-endorsed Virginia Republican Glenn Youngkin, who ran on lies about race and “education,” won the election for governor.
Here’s a sampling of what several very smart Black women are saying about the election, and what’s behind the Republican win.
“It’s not the messaging, folks. This country simply loves white supremacy,” tweeted journalist Jemele Hill, a contributing writer for The Atlantic.
“It’s clear,” tweets Sherrilyn Ifill, the President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, “that there is not yet a willingness to confront the landscape of American politics. The [Virginia] race was not abt ‘education’ or ‘enthusiasm’ or ‘change.’ There’s no ability to engage w/the grim reality of an electorate of white voters primed to embrace racial threats.”
“And how can millions of voters become engaged with actual policies and issues and resistant to the seductive & entertaining manipulation served up 24-7 on Fox News, Facebook and other online platforms. This is about how to save and strengthen a democracy,” she added.
MSNBC’s Joy Reid has been getting hammered since Tuesday night by the right for her very accurate accusations of white supremacy, and for calling Republicans dangerous.
Reid also responded to Ifill:
“I think we also have to engage with the deep commitment many Americans have to the racialized mythologies that have been the staples of American education and media for centuries,” she said. “The tribal motivation to maintain and retransmit them is stronger than the commitment to democracy.”
While some political observers are noting that CRT lies played a major part in Youngkin’s win, the creator of the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, weighed in on the CRT aspect of the election.
“The only racial dog whistles in American politics are the ones heard by the media, because for the rest of the country it’s explicit,” Hannah-Jones says. “If the only educational concern in the election was the teaching of race and racism, then the issue wasn’t education: it was and is always RACE.”
And she says that race is the “organizing principle” of American politics.:
Reid later Wednesday morning had a lot more to say, it’s worth the read:
“McAuliffe’s problem wasn’t that Dems didn’t pass Manchin-Sinema’s infrastructure bill,” she noted.
“It’s the OTHER bill — the one they nuked parental leave, college debt repayment and a major climate provision out of — that actually would help the people who mainly vote for Democrats: minority, young and single women, working class POC, white collegians… you know: their base,” Reid lamented.
“Youngkin” she continued, “like the Republican he is, filled the vacuum with inchoate fear of threats to the cherished historical narrative of a glorious history of unbroken white Christian great/goodness.”