by Jamilah Lemieux | January 2017
I don’t know that I serve my own mental health needs by putting my body on the line to feign solidarity with women who by and large didn’t have my back prior to November. I’ve never felt any thing remotely resembling sisterhood with White women. That lack of sisterhood haunted me at times during the 2016 election season. As Election Day approached and Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton emerged as the frontrunner, I waited to feel something. Some sort of connection between her and me, some sort of emotion tied to the likelihood that a person who shares my gender expression would be the “leader of the free world.” It never came. However, the absence of that sisterhood never felt more real for me than it did when I learned that 53 percent of White female voters cast a ballot for a man whose bigotry was, perhaps, his greatest selling point. I never expected that White women by-and-large would favor Clinton over Donald Trump because she promised criminal justice reform or would do more to protect the rights of people of color than her opponent. But I did believe that Trump’s incredibly public misogyny—manifested in attacks on women’s looks, a boast about “pussy” grabbing and promises to prosecute people who seek abortions—would have made him less than favorable. Silly me to expect self-preservation to take priority over racism, I suppose.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Accountability] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Fragility/Tears] [Politics]