Last night’s Alabama Senate race culminated in a nation watching nail biter.
If you are left, center-left, center, or center-right in your political perspective, last night felt like watching your favorite team enter into the playoffs by beating its division rival. In thirteen months and 4 days of vitriol being spewed from the top, this was even more satisfying. Most of us who fit into those political strata live in the major metro areas of this nation, and while we watched the election, we marveled in its horror: how could this be this close? What are the people in Alabama thinking? Choosing between a nutcase who also has a sexual predatory past vs. a centrist pro-choice candidate should win in every place, right?
Well, not so much; southern white people don’t like to be counseled on their foibles from the outside world. These are the people that started a war for freedom to retain the right to enslave others. Not so fast, America…..
We viewed it as needed to go in and to retrain the natives; last night’s win was for our democracy, and it happened because we were able to get them to see the light–our enlightened reason.
Coastal people, don’t go thinking that Alabama isn’t a part of America, or that you are better than that. California isn’t so much more enlightened. In 2012, Obama only won the white vote in 4 states. Even in the “blue states”, white voters went for Romney: 53 percent in California, 52 percent in New York, 55 percent in Pennsylvania.
The reason why these elections happen in the affirmative is because minorities become engaged with progressives and independents, and help protect their interests, which are historically in the interests of America.
At the Congressional and National levels, the way of the minority vote has always been on the side of history. At the congressional and national levels, the conservative vote and its lawmakers have always been on the wrong side of history–slavery, Jim Crow, women’s suffrage, child labor, War intervention and engagement, Civil Rights, integration, environmental protection, social reform programs,….the list goes on.
Last night’s election wasn’t just about race, but it was a big part of it. When a candidate who is also a judge states that American life was best when black people were slaves and women couldn’t vote, and that he wanted to repeal those constitutional amendments affording them those freedoms, then we know what we have in a candidate. And despite the debate over his advances to underage women, the white Alabama population said that his beliefs–not his sexual predatory actions–were still enough to gain the majority of their votes.
Last night revealed that there is so much real ignorance in people, that it is questionable whether or not they should be protected from themselves…..
While the numbers vary on 95-96% of black voters going for the Democrat, they suggest that as many as 3% of black women and 7% of black men voted for Moore or a write-in candidate. Now, let’s say that even half of these votes are due to ballot error, falsification at the ballot box, or some other procedural problem. I would still like to know how hundreds to thousands of black people could vote for someone who wanted to literally put them back into slavery?
How could nearly 2/3rds of white women vote for someone who said he wanted to repeal their right to vote?
This could speak to a larger issue of fear, need for association with the oppressor, or a belief so strong in a one issue among dozens that nothing else matters.
The night is over; the celebration should be as well. We now need to start thinking about culling the ignorance. I do not want to address white males; they voted in their interests, and there is nothing that can be done to appeal to their morality (or lack thereof). What do you do about the white women and black (and all other minorities) people, who thought that Moore’s opposition to abortion outweighed a candidate in Doug Jones who prosecuted KKK members who killed little girls? How can we reconcile them as a part of the black community?
I only hope that we survive as a healthy enough nation to one day have the Moore supporters be as ashamed of their vote as we are of them today.
holowe 