July is that one month for me that is always just personally and professionally chaotic. It’s the one month where I am always playing catch-up and trying to catch my breath. This July, though, had more twists and turns than I could have ever imagined with Joe Biden unexpectedly dropping out of the presidential race and Kamala Harris becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee. Talk about an absolute whirlwind of the most unexpected kind.
It’s safe to say that the energy around this election has shifted, whether you love the idea of Kamala Harris as our next president or are less than enthused about her—or even the process of how she came to be the presumptive nominee. People are feeling something and that is not a bad thing, given that many were less than enthused about the 2020 rematch we had come to accept.
It seems that while the hardcore left-leaning folks are firmly in the camp of not feeling particularly hopeful for a myriad of reasons, a good number of the voting populace is feeling reinvigorated, especially after last Sunday’s “Win With Black Women” Zoom call, where over 40,000 Black women met to rally around Harris and raise funds. The group raised over a million dollars.
The energy from that one call seems to have kicked off an interesting and rarely seen energy for a candidate that breaks down along racial lines and has some questioning such a strategy.
In the last week, we have seen the national chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) host two calls, one for white women entitled “White Women Against MAGA,” which brought out 5,000+ white women on a call, along with a “White Men Against MAGA,” where about a thousand white men showed up. Note, I am professionally affiliated with SURJ; my organization, CCI, is the organizational home to the Boston chapter of SURJ, which was initially started by yours truly and a cadre of white organizers back in 2016. We also work with several Maine SURJ chapters as part of organizing in Maine.
Even larger than the SURJ calls was the call for white women organized by several influential white women, including author and activist Glennon Doyle. Their action entitled “White Women: Answer the Call,” turned out over 100,000 white women and raised $11 million in support of the Harris campaign. Subsequently, we have seen Black men organize their own call, along with the LGBTQ+ community hosting their own call and support for Harris—and there is also a Native American/Two Spirit call happening this weekend. It seems there is even a White Dudes for Kamala group.
While many are excited to see such passion and energy swirling around the campaign, the question has come up” Why aren’t we working together? Some even posing the question: Why aren’t we coming together as one unified force to support Kamala?
Honestly, for folks without a deep racial analysis, that’s a valid question. In America, race matters and it often trumps everything, especially when working-class white folks and other white folks often vote against their own self interest, especially if it means being aligned with nonwhite folks.
Trump’s accent to the presidency and beating Hilary Clinton revealed some painful truths for white folks—particularly white women—when post-election data in both 2016 and 2020 revealed some painful truths. White women in significant numbers voted for Trump, a well-known misogynist. For liberal leaning, progressive, leftist types it was an uncomfortable wake-up call—facing the reality that white women were often eager to serve as the foot soldiers for both patriarchy and subsequently racism.
Too often, well-meaning and well-intentioned white folks eager to become anti-racists or existing anti-racists jump into the work, but despite their good intentions, they never progress beyond being little more than white saviors. The problem is that white saviorism doesn’t save Black and BIPOC people and it doesn’t save white people. All it does is jostle the social order and allow for a few token folks of color to be allowed entry to the grand feast of white supremacy.
Dismantling white supremacy requires white people to do their own internal work and examination and then gain the comfort and skills to work with their fellow white folks, instead of expecting Black and Brown people to do the heavy lifting that perpetuates harm. It requires white folks breaking the code of racial silence that is baked into whiteness and getting real with themselves and each other. It means developing the skills to both call out and call in with love and grace.
In anti-racism work, breaking groups down by race is a well-known strategy for deepening the work. At the long-running White Privilege Conference, the daily racial caucusing is one of my favorite features. It’s literally a time set aside where groups meet by race and reflect on the day. Recognizing that our identities shape how we experience things, it is a time where we can be real and vulnerable without the burden of having to explain to people with a different racial identity. While that explaining can often be seen as harmless for white-identified folks, it’s often experienced as harmful for BIPOC folks. It’s also just tiring as hell.
In the aftermath of the 2016 elections, white women worked to do better and to show up for their BIPOC sisters, but many of their actions from Nasty Women attire to pink pussy hats were seen as nothing more than performance, especially when the 2020 voting data revealed that white women still leaned more towards Trump, even after loud proclamations that they did not.
For the past several years, white women have had to reckon with how to show up for themselves and others without leaning into pure performance and one of the ways they are doing that is by organizing as white women in this moment. Recognizing that Kamala Harris needs their support but without expecting Black and brown women to hand hold and tend to them, which too often leads to displays of white fragility and the centering of white feelings.
Choosing to organize along racial lines also allows nonwhite women the space to talk openly about their fears and concerns without having white deflection come into play. It’s a place where BIPOC women can focus on our work without that extra burden of carrying white women.
On the surface, while this can seem divisive. The truth is that by creating separate spaces that allow for the interpersonal and emotionality, it creates greater unity for the larger goal of coalescing around Kamala Harris and supporting her campaign. One of things that I have heard come out of the separate calls is that it really seems to have given white women the space to be real about the ways they have historically failed their BIPOC sisters and themselves and how they are committed to not doing that again. It’s allowing white women the space to create accountability to themselves and then they can create greater accountability to BIPOC women and others.
If we are serious about electing Kamala Harris and doing better when it comes to racism, spaces to work together separately are a valuable tool for moving ahead and—while it feels uncomfortable to some—that’s just the deep-seated nature of whiteness which prizes appearance over substance. Everyone needs a place to be real and raggedy, but that realness need not come at the expense of those most affected by bigotry.
So, no. it’s not racist to organize by race and it is a tool that can bring greater unity both to get Harris elected and in deepening our commitment to racial justice.
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