Black Women Are Trying to Save America (Why Arent We Helping Them?)

[@ninacarmen8433]

I am so sick of this country. I've been crying for the last couple of days. It's really refreshing to hear your take. You are always so thoughtful

[@BookishTexan]

@@ninacarmen8433 Thank you. It’s hard to find hope, but I’ll keep looking.

[@BlakJakk]

Move somewhere else

[@James-hn6fe]

Keep looking.

[@HannahsBooks]

Racism with a heavy dose of misogyny is the foundation of so many of the “other” issues people talk about. Thank you for this discussion.

[@BookishTexan]

@@HannahsBooks Thank you Hannah. I feel like so much of the dissection of the Harris loss that we see on all media chooses to ignore this and in the process prevents us from addressing it honestly.

[@scallydandlingaboutthebooks]

You are right of course. I don't think we can underestimate the misogyny as well as the racism involved.

[@BookishTexan]

@@scallydandlingaboutthebooks We shouldn’t, but people here are.

[@BookChatWithPat8668]

I agree with you, Brian, on everything here. I would also say that there is deep-seated misogyny at play as well--even in white women, which is deeply troubling. I am sick at heart.

[@BookishTexan]

Yes, definitely misogyny plays a huge role as well.

[@BookChatWithPat8668]

@ I’m going to send you a private message later today…need to discuss some things.

[@BookishTexan]

@ ok.

[@llaylapurnell5948]

Thank-you for your words of acknowledgement and understanding. As a Black woman and retiree from the USAF, I can assure you that I did not vote for VP Harris because she is black or because she is a woman. I voted for her because if we lose our democracy, we lose something precious. How anyone in the military could cast a vote for Donald Trump is totally mind-blowing. It’s as if we weren’t serving in the same military.

[@BookishTexan]

@@llaylapurnell5948 Thank you for watching and leaving your comment. It only seems to be white people who can’t move beyond race and vote for candidates that represent our faith in democracy.

[@tananario23]

We aren’t, sister. We got tricked into thinking if we were a part of the military-industrial complex and were good little knee grows, we would get the same benefits. That’s on us. Let’s just not be the same fool twice. When they come asking us to march in the streets again because boo-hoo, their women are suffering from the lack of any kind of gynecological care, close the door, break out the Sade and candles and the shea butter for a nice spa day at home. If you have an intimate partner, maybe break out some Luther.

[@drmjmcconner]

Brian, thank you for this. As someone who participated in the Women’s March in 2017, I absolutely will NOT participate in the next march that they are having in January 2025. We [Black American women] consistently understand the assignment, and most of us have decided it is time to take the capes off because we are tired of looking out for folks who don’t look out for themselves. We have consistently looked out for others in this nation. It is time for other folks to step up. We are tired of watching folks vote against their own interests all in the name of maintaining status quo systems. We are also tired of showing up for everyone else when it is not reciprocated. This fight is no longer Black women’s problem.

[@BookishTexan]

@@drmjmcconner Thank you. Your response to this election is justified.

[@PageTurnersWithKatja]

I can only imagine the stress of the election and the result. Great video and stats discussion.

[@BookishTexan]

Thank you. I am currently exploring ways to act to try to address what I feel are the most likely abuses that will come from the Trump administration. I think action will help the anxiety.

[@hesterdunlop3982]

Hey Brian . It's a disaster . Populism, with it's foundations of blaming " the other " , nationalism and fear is on the rise globally and we all need to be worried . Fear is the most potent electoral stimulant , anger second to that and we are living through a communication revolution that exists to monetise these emotions and this creates fear and anger / indignation as a default . Same impact on global stability as the printing press and that took a while to settle ......one good by product , though , is that I can talk to you . Went to Tottenham last week to see City get beaten 😢.....

[@BookishTexan]

That is a wonderful byproduct! In regard to social media/ communication technology and its impact on elections, I naively thought it would help weaken the hold the wealthy have on our governments and institutions of power. It appears to have done the opposite.

[@iamjane9628]

I am a white female who is completely disgusted with my demographic. I appreciate your wisdom and eloquence on this topic. I gave my time, money and vote to Democrats in this election, as always. I guess it was not enough. I will continue to do what I can, and I accept your challenge, Brian.

[@barrymoore4470]

Thank you for all the effort you made to help steer the country on a sane course.

[@BookishTexan]

We came up short but there are at least 70 million of us. Hopefully we’ll find ways to organize and stop/slow down our decline.

[@steventregilgas5016]

Hi I’ve commented a few times on your channel and I usually agree with what you say my name is Steve I’m Australian in our country it’s compulsory to vote if you don’t vote you are fined but in the US if you don’t like either candidate you don’t vote that may have helped Trump

[@artstories52]

Many things Australians do right, I really mean that. I would have applied for citizenship years ago but those spiders!!

[@BookishTexan]

If I thought requiring our entire voting age population would make them pay attention and cast an informed vote I would be all for compulsory voting. As we are now, I think that would just make things worse.

[@artstories52]

@@BookishTexan yes, prob a 'you can lead a horse to water...' moment.

[@iamjane9628]

@@BookishTexan I do agree. There would be even more mis-/ uninformed voters in this scenario.

[@LucasMyFriends]

@@BookishTexan oh dear god NO PLEASE

[@eb4225]

I am devastated and i mostly agree with everything you said. I will add that misogyny played a big role in Kamala not being elected, not just racism. And i think overall Harris wasn't a good candidate, like it or not he is a political animal, she's not. I dont agree with you about the Latino vote for Trump. We associated Black people and Latino as minorities and they are. But Latino contributed greatly to Trump re-election that's a fact and it's concerning. It should not be dismissed. Lastly we need to talk about white women and why despite Trump policies on abortions, they still decided to vote for him. I think the key to what happened in this election lies with White Women vote.

[@BookishTexan]

Thank you for your comment. Trump is a force that I don’t understand. I’m not sure any Democrat could have beaten him but I’m sad to say that I think the only one who could have is a white male. It certainly strengthens the right when Hispanic males vote Republican, but their votes didn’t elect Trump this time. It was the vote of 60% of white men and 52% of white women that elected Trump.

[@bridgetvollmer6337]

This is such an insightful video. Thank you for clearly stating the facts. I agree 100%.

[@BookishTexan]

@@bridgetvollmer6337 Thank you

[@carolinekovtun2463]

I was overjoyed to vote for Kamala Harris and am very disappointed in my cohort of white women voters that we failed us all. I agree with you that race is an enormous factor in why even the white women vote was so pro-Trump.

[@BookishTexan]

I too gleefully voted for Harris, and am disappointed to learn that I am a part of a demographic group that has made it clear that we will only vote for a white man. No matter how vile that white man is.

[@BlakJakk]

😂😂😂

[@bookofdust]

Well, we certainly discovered that this county does not understand that “In da klerb, we all fam!”

[@awebofstories]

Another banger video! I'm still reeling from the election and I can't believe we are here AGAIN!

[@BookishTexan]

@@awebofstories It’s like a recurring nightmare.

[@RaynorReadsStuff]

I, in the UK , am stunned. All my US friends on here obviously not representative of the general populace. I can only, sadly agree, that the voting was misogynistic and racist. So sad

[@BookishTexan]

@@RaynorReadsStuff I’m stunned as well, but remember that when all the votes are counted at best half (probably less than half) of American voters will have voted for Trump. Last time I checked there are 70 million of us who did not vote for him. And apparently we are all on BookTube😂

[@Book_Hugger]

Yes, yes, yes. I am so disappointed in the racism in this country right now. It never stops.

[@BookishTexan]

@@Book_Hugger Exactly! And it won’t stop until pundits on the left stop looking for every excuse in the book other than the one irrefutable cause for this years loss.

[@barrymoore4470]

@@BookishTexan What the pundits aren't willing to admit is the utter moral failure of the majority of the American people that this election illustrates, racism being a cornerstone of that moral failure.

[@Barklord]

Liberals would fight racism and misogyny better if they focused on economic injustice as the cause of reactionary political movements.

[@Barklord]

​​@BookishTexan How the Ruling Class Utilized “Whiteness” to Divide the Working Class By Ian Cooper-Smith "The solution lies in our hands, however, the question remains: are white workers willing to shed the privilege of whiteness to benefit the working-class struggle?" What is the struggle against? Economic and political hierarchy! What is it for? Socialism

[@readandre-read]

I think a lot of the analysis trying to explain this based on issues are just avoiding the enormous spectre of racism and misogyny in the US. Of course Harris could have strengthened her approach to this, that and the other; this is true of every candidate, and having more time would certainly have helped, but she can't change the fact that a lot of people never listened to her at all because she is a woman and Black.

[@BookishTexan]

@@readandre-read BOOM! Exactly right. Thank you Angelea.

[@roguemedic]

Thank you for the great video. We have been misled about the reasons for inflation. As prices have gone up, corporate profits have gone up even more. We have had record corporate profits. If the companies were paying higher prices and passing those price increases on to us, the profits would not be setting records each time they report earnings, but each time they report earnings, they are reporting record profits. Not all corporations, but many of the largest corporations have been raising prices because they can. Some price increases are due to specific causes. Bird flu has required the elimination of millions of laying chickens, because of infection risk. Fewer chickens laying fewer eggs will lead to more expensive eggs. The collapse of the fragile supply chain during the pandemic AND the difficulty in getting that supply chain to function has still not been overcome. Insurance has been increasing, but when we change the climate to produce more destructive storms, of course the insurance companies are going to charge more to protect their profits. Insurance companies are required to have enough money to pay off for very large financial damage, which might happen every 50 years, but climate change has caused those extreme pay outs to be much more frequent. If the insurance companies cannot maintain large enough money reserves, they cannot sell insurance, which will decrease the competition among insurance companies AND will decrease the amount that can be insured (unless new companies enter the market. Insurance companies have to get insurance from reinsurance companies to protect themselves against catastrophic losses. One example of what can go wrong is the Great Recession, when the insurance companies were doing a horrible job of assessing the risks they were insuring, leading to many going bankrupt or getting bailed out, or getting bought out for a fraction of what they used to be worth. I was in line to vote with a white man who was making the excuse that going bankrupt over and over and over and over and over and over is "good business", which seems to be a regurgitation of a nonsensical right wing attempt at an excuse. Ultimately, the right wing promotes the idea that people who don't look like us (old white men) are responsible for our lives being less than perfect and the solution is corruption and incompetence. Stupid white people do not seem to understand the poem by Martin Niemöller - "First They Came", nor do they seem to understand the preaching of the God they replaced with Trump, but that would require something they don't have - reason/compassion/understanding/objectivity/concern for their own children/... .

[@BookishTexan]

I’m afraid few of the Trump voters would have had the patience to listen to that explanation and engage with it honestly. All the information you shared was available to the public but they either ignored it, dismissed it, or get their information from sources that hide it. I feel like the economy is one of those things voters say drives their votes, but is a convenient cover for the real reason behind their votes.

[@roguemedic]

@@BookishTexan There is also the mistaken belief, based on repetition by the Republicans, that the economy and/or the stock market does better with Republican presidents. We have a largely uninformed population that claims to be blissfully ignorant, but willing to persecute anyone their preachers tell them to persecute, in order to have more bliss. Leon Festinger could have been studying the Republican Party for his explanation of cognitive dissonance. .Looking at the ballot initiatives on abortion, almost all received a majority of the votes in the state, while Trump also received a majority of the votes. It is as if voters irrationally concluded that "as long as we protect abortion, there is no risk from Trump." In Florida, 60% was needed to protect abortion, but they only got 57.2%. An amendment creating a constitutional right to hunt and fish got 67.4% of the vote, so hunting and fishing are protected from the regulatory excesses of Trump and DeSantis. And Florida reelected Rick Scott, who ran the company that committed the largest Medicare fraud in American history, because if you are going to vote to defraud voters (yourselves), you might as well vote for someone superlative. 😔

[@barrymoore4470]

@@BookishTexan I agree, Brian, the economy was not the real reason for Trump's victory.

[@suzannedavies7996]

Have you seen a breakdown of voting by age? Are young people less likely to vote For Trump? Is there any hope for the future? Love from 🇬🇧

[@BookishTexan]

There is hope. The two age groups that went for Trump were Gen X and the generation above,

[@Barklord]

Q: Why didn't the Democrats counter Trump's racist immigration politics with a critique of American foreign policy decisions that increase immigration? A: Because as a capitalist ruling class party, they are just as complicit in creating the problem. Instead, the Democratic Party went further Right and adopted the Republican position to appeal to them instead of the Left.

[@BookishTexan]

@@Barklord I don’t think they moved further right on foreign policy. Biden was already there. But if you want to say Biden’s unpopularity provided cover for many of those who voted against Harris for racist/misogynist reasons I agree.

[@FrankOdonnell-ej3hd]

Trump is the oldest person to be elected president so I take some solace from the old saying that where there’s death there is hope⚛❤

[@BookishTexan]

That is a great old saying!

[@iamjane9628]

There is no hope in this scenario. Look who would be his successor.

[@BookishTexan]

@ I will continue to hope, but not hope blindly. I think Trump is a singular phenomenon in his ability to connect with people and inspire loyalty. I don’t think Vance has that.

[@iamjane9628]

@@BookishTexan I agree. However, if T dies in office, or gets committed to a care facility, Vance is our president. I guess the best we can wish for is that T lives just long enough to complete his term. And that we still have the possibility of another election after that.

[@barrymoore4470]

@@iamjane9628 Vance is at least an intelligent and reasonably articulate person. I would certainly feel more respect for a President Vance (as baleful as his policies would surely be) than I can muster for President Trump, who is an utter embarrassment.

[@marianryan2991]

This argument is true and has been for decades now, in terms of WW and WM voting against Democrats in the presidential race, at a rate hovering in the mid-to-upper 50s in percentile. Exit poll data has it at 56% this year. (While this year's data are preliminary, that puts it at 1% lower than the 57% in 2020.) I didn't check into historical race/gender data (had difficulty finding it tbh), but with that caveat...in terms of white people of all genders, per current data, Harris hasn't got a greater white vote against her. I am white, but I am not trying to "whitewash" the fact that great percentages are significantly racist and/or misogynist--they are, from personal experience!--but at the moment those factors can't be imputed from the data to disaggregate from the continuing white allegiance with the GOP. *I suspect I am just trying to kill my besieged emotional center in the right brain by doing left-brain stuff with numbers and looking at charts, which I usually avoid, lol. TLDR: Most white people have voted Republican at 55% or above, against many of their own de facto interests and those of every other non-wealthy demographic group since approx 1964. Further ramblings: The bias is long baked in, since the birth of the Southern Strategy. I felt furious that HRC lost to the slob, and felt surely there was a heavy dose of misogyny involved, but the GOP white vote was again, 57% -- interestingly, the white vote for HRC was the lowest since Mondale, at 37%. Possibly the misogyny factor shows up there; OTOH Obama got only 39% of the white vote in 2012. (Apologies for the prolixity.) #30

[@marianryan2991]

Hmm! my comment was censored -- about 6 lines removed. Readers can count themselves lucky! Maybe there is a length limit unknown to me.

[@BookishTexan]

@@marianryan2991 That is so strange. I can see what you wrote but there is a line through much of the middle. I think you made a good point based on the numbers that continue to emerge that show her losses to not be as stark as they once seemed. My larger point is (one I wish I had made clearer) is that we just seem to accept that the majority of white voters in this country simply will not vote for any candidate other than a white man and there is only one explanation for that. The percentages of white voters who will vote for non-white candidates may fluctuate a little from election to election but the core problem remains.

[@marianryan2991]

@@BookishTexan It does, and I should say (preparing for blowback) that Republicans appear to display and be motivated by racism and misogyny--you need only consider the acceptance of the comments of their standard bearer and various GOP lawmakers and conservative "influencers," who also show these qualities in the legislation they do or do not support. Every R electorate is new, with plenty of turnover, etc., but overt time a lack of interest in improving the lives of marginalized people, sometimes even declining to respect their full humanity, appears unwavering. Because of the way these figures nonchalantly speak, especially their guy, and lack of interest in policies that help women, children, Black constituents, working class families, and on and on, I cannot escape concluding that racism and misogyny are a substantial part of what motivates them across the board. It used to be somewhat under wraps but now it's part of the brand. It's been 9 years of make America (openly) racist and misogynist again.

[@marianryan2991]

@@BookishTexan To be brief, hopefully, I have no doubt that the Trump voters are motivated by racism and misogyny, in some cases simply indifferent to these things, which is to per force embrace them. Certainly there is no way to rationalize voting for him if you are an opponent of these. HT Rebecca Solnit: I just found a Substack by a writer called Robert Hubbell, and his letter of yesterday completely agrees with you.

[@LaurieInTexas]

Great points! I have been depressed and stunned for the last few days like everyone who voted for Kamala. I also have to admit that I am not in any demographic that is most at risk by the incoming administration, but I need to stand with and fight for those who are. I am appalled by our fellow white Americans, especially women who voted for Trump and who continue to support him after everything we know. Maybe there was some excuse in 2016 that we didn't know enough about his criminal actions and racist and misogynist views, but not now.

[@BookishTexan]

@@LaurieInTexas I feel exactly the same. I am trying to think of something we can do now. Let me ask you, since you live in Texas, how MAGA do you think John Cornyn is? I think the first thing we might do is to try to pressure “reasonable” Republican Senators to block Trump’s most vile, dangerous, and unqualified appointees - like Mike Davis, RFKjr, MTG. I think there are three Republicans Senators that might vote to block them - Romney, Murkowski, and Collins (iffy)- and was wondering if Cornyn might be persuadable.

[@LaurieInTexas]

@BookishTexan I don't think he is likely to be persuaded to buck the party line very often. He hasn't on most issues in the past. I read today that he is hoping to be the majority leader when McConnell steps down this year. If he succeeds, I think he'll be even less likely to be reasonable.

[@BookishTexan]

@ Thanks for your input. That is very helpful.

[@Barklord]

Search: "Why Donald Trump Won the US Election: Kamala Harris failed to provide an economic alternative" -Geopolitical Economy Report

[@artstories52]

Robert Reich said this as well. Education, or lack thereof, elected trump because those people that believed the economy was worse under Biden haven't seen an improvement in their lives or opportunities in 40 years. Repubs denigrate education because it helps them with this group.

[@BookishTexan]

Thanks. I read the article, but don’t agree with much of it. Harris, like it or not, as a member of the current admin, was saddled with the economy we have. That she and Biden failed to make a positive economic case is true, but as the article points out when the benefits of a growing economy haven’t made their way to the average voter in a tangible way it’s not a case that can easily be made even if you could make the case without the droning of the RW media telling voters how terrible everything is.

[@triofan9]

Trump never outlined an "economic alternative" so this is a joke. When asked about healthcare, the man said he had "concepts of a plan". Please stop buying into this excuse that it's about the economy. That's the excuse people use because they can't say why they really support him.

[@triofan9]

Trump literally praised Elon Musk for firing employees who went on strike. His tariffs are going to raise costs for people. Conservatives have bragged about raising the retirement age and cutting social security. He doesn't have a plan to stop price gouging or bring down the cost of living. They are against raising the minimum wage. Please stop pretending that this is about the economy. It is not.

[@Happymind-happyworld.]

Nah Trump didn’t even have a plan 😂