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Media plays an influential role in writing political narratives, but with the explosion of social media and online news distribution, the Internet has become increasingly influential as an informative and reactionary force. Time and time again on my timeline, I see articles about how black people, as representatives for all people of color, don’t support Bernie enough, and all these well-meaning white folk in the NPR comments wondering why these black people don’t know better. Or I see Buzzfeed and BBC’s in depth coverage of Bernie Bros as a worrisome political phenomenon, despite their admittedly small numbers. Or I see every major news sources wondering whether Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright are right about younger women betraying Hillary in their support of Bernie. It’s been interesting to observe how race and gender are deployed to construct particular media moments. Mainstream media, Clinton supporters, and Bernie supporters, all white dominated entities, do not seem particularly interested in the voices, opinions or issues of women of color. There is little exploration of our motivations or needs as a voting demographic, only prescriptive and paternalistic discussions of the votes we can contribute to a particular campaign. Identity largely impacts how audiences situate themselves as voters and understand the voting population in turn, but both media and voters often struggle to employ an intersectional lens on politics, beyond white people and black people, men and women. An intersectional perspective on people and politics would go a long way to understanding that white women do not represent all women, and that blacks, do not represent all people of color.
The argument that exposure to varying degrees of sexism means that some women feel free to identify politically without regard for their gender; this idea that younger women are less likely to see gender first, assumes that there are no other identities that interact with womanhood, and filter experiences of femininity and feminism. Sexism isn’t the same for everybody, and white feminist movements have a history of excluding women of color and even furthering their marginalization. Hillary is supposed to represent unilateral progress for women and the Democratic Party, such that Clinton supporters often dismiss the particular critiques that people of color have of Clinton; critiques often centered on her privilege as a white women, the ways her political career has furthered the marginalization of people of color, and Clinton’s own history of dismissing and criminalizing people of color until their votes become political currency. Clinton’s whiteness is subsumed in her identity as a woman, allowing her to situate her political campaign as progress for all women and center her femininity as political capita. Her privileges are erased and she becomes un-raced such that all women, regardless of their experience of oppression, must feel some form of allegiance to her in order to reflect “woman solidarity,” a concept conveniently missing from these circles when it comes to solidarity for women who aren’t white or cisgendered.
As a result of the perception that gender necessitates a particular political affiliation, regardless of race or class, female Bernie supporters sometimes display anxiety that their political views might be conflated with a disregard for women, white women as a stand-in for all women. This is also in part, due to how white men are centered in discussions of Bernie’s campaign, to the point that it seems that they are the only ones voting for him. The “Bernie Bro” phenomenon serves as a particularly salient example of virulent sexism that is often conflated with the campaign as a whole. While everyone acknowledges that “Bros” are an isolated minority, this small, white, male population is still given significant space in conversations about the Sanders campaign. They are given more space, and more acknowledgement than the thousands of people of color that make up Bernie supporters. When white Sanders supporters decry the lack of “minority” votes for their candidate, they not only identify a lack of older, black votes as a problem for all people of color, they also absolve white supporters of the need to support racial progress. These comments, beyond being paternalistic and condescending, hold people of color responsible for electing a racially progressive candidate, rather than questioning why whites, white men, or anybody but women and nonwhites support their candidate.