In the year 2008, when Barack Obama became the Democratic Presidential Nominee, a bunch of White Conservative racists began losing their damn minds. At that time, Democrats began to see pictures on the Internet of watermelon patches and photoshopped images of Obama as a stereotypical 1950s Hollywood African Witch Doctor. After Barack Obama won the Presidential election in 2008 and became President Obama, they lost their minds even more.
Jumping forward eight years, one of the most remarkable things about the 2016 Presidential election season was the nonstop, unending, and unyielding racism and sexism. The 2008 election was bad. The 2016 election season seemed to me even worse. Those of us that hoped against hope that the two elections of Barack Obama as President and the nomination of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Presidential Nominee meant that the U.S. was actually making headway against racism and sexism felt like the 2016 election season was in many ways a huge step backward. I am here to tell you that it was the very progress against bigotry that occurred from 1980 to 2016 that caused the 2016 backlash to happen. In addition, it was the future progress against bigotry that surely will happen that caused a bigoted nutbag like Donald Trump to appear. I would like to show some graphics so that the reader can see what I am referring to. The first is from the Pew Research Center:
Notice that by the 2008 Presidential election, the American Black vote was actually on par with the White vote. Now, since Black Americans tend to vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic party, this scared a lot of Republicans in 2008. This is why sometime after 2008, Republicans started really pushing for voter suppression against People of Color and for gerrymandering involving both race and party ID on both state and national levels. First, Republicans pushed really hard to get as many state Governorships as well as state senate and state house seats as they could by 2010. The year 2010 was critical because it was when the new census would allow the creation of new districts as well as redistricting based upon the new census numbers. Then, Republicans used a computer program called REDMAP to severely gerrymander state legislative districts as well as U.S. Congressional districts anywhere where they had won control of a state.
The REDMAP software program charted where liberal, moderate, and conservative voters lived, as well as where people of different races lived within a state. Using REDMAP, states were redistricted to shove huge numbers of Democrats, Liberals, and Liberal people of color into a few districts, while spreading White Conservatives and White Republicans out across a majority of state and Congressional districts which also contained a fewer amount of Democrats, liberals, and People of Color in them. Not only did these districts strengthen Republicans and weaken Democrats. They also strengthened the White vote while weakening the vote of People of Color. By changing the maps in a number of states, Republicans were able to gain and maintain a majority on both the national level as well as on many state levels, even when Republicans had received fewer votes than Democrats. Was this fair or good? Of course not. However, Republicans only really cared about winning.
Republicans also did this so that they could slow down what was coming. So, what was coming? Take a look at the charts below. They show the changing racial makeup of the United States over time. Notice how the percentage of White people keeps getting smaller and the percentage of People Of Color keeps getting bigger. The first chart is from the Wikipedia Commons:
OK, notice in the chart above that White people made up about 69% of America in 2007. So, what happens by about 2045? Check out the Brookings.edu chart below:
Wait a minute. According to the chart above, if things continue as they have been, White people in the U.S. will be a minority by 2045. This is why Donald Trump’s message to Republicans was, “I will keep the non-White people out of America”. This is why he wanted to build a border wall. This is why he does not want to have America take in refugees. This is why he does not want to allow immigration from what he terms as “S**thole” countries, such as the countries in Africa. It is also why he wants to take in immigrants from really White places like Norway instead of from Africa. It is all about stopping from happening what the graph above shows has been happening—and what the graph shows will happen. This is because when White people are in the minority, you can kiss the Republican party goodbye. This is also why White Supremacists and Nazis are so in love with Donald Trump, and why, when Donald Trump got into office, his administration was so loaded up with White people and White Racists, like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon.
OK, so that explains racism. What about all of the sexism of 2016? Here is a graph from the Pew Research Center:
You will notice if you look at the chart that both women and men were voting about equally for the Democratic Party until about 1980. From then on, more women were voting for the Democratic Party than men. Why did this happen?
Well, in 1973, Roe vs Wade made abortion legal in all 50 states. The Republican reaction to that was to try and do whatever it could to try to curtail both abortion and other medical services for women. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, supported both women and their right to choose. So, over the next few years, the Republican Party pushed to make getting an abortion harder and pushed to defund the medical clinics that helped women. The Democratic Party did the opposite and slowly won more and more support among women. Because of this, Republicans have slowly come to view a certain kind of woman as the enemy.
Now, not all kinds of women have been considered the enemy by Republicans. The women who did whatever men told them to do, who worked the jobs that men said were OK for women to have, and the women who never would even think of having an abortion were OK by Republican men. It was those women who thought for themselves, who made decisions regardless of what men thought, and women who wanted the right to choose what was best for them that were not the OK women to Republicans. It was those kinds of women that Republican men thought were the enemy. It was those kinds of women that Republican Conservative Rush Limbaugh called “Feminazis”.
So, just as Republicans started making people of color the big-time enemy in 2008, they also made certain kinds of women the enemy—especially women of color. This is why Donald Trump loves to target women of color like Maxine Waters. It is also why he loves to target members of “The Squad” like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. You see, to many Republicans, people of color, as well as women who think for themselves, are the enemy.
To that, all I can say is, bring it on. The days of White, racist, Conservative Republicans are ending. They cannot stop it. All they can do is try to slow it down. By around 2045, the Republicans will be toast. Let’s do all we can to make it happen sooner than that.