With the end of the November 2018 midterm elections and one of the highest turnout rates of young voters in decades, the outcomes of these races leave much to celebrate, mourn, or reflect. But one of the most unspoken forces of this election and the 2016 presidential election is the impact of white women. And this is not necessarily a good thing.
In the Texas senatorial race between Beto O’Rourke and Ted Cruz, white women made up 59% of Cruz’s votes. Cruz, the incumbent of Texas, was elected initially in 2012, pushing out opponent Kay Bailey Hutchison, and was a potential presidential candidate for the Republican party in the 2016 presidential race. Cruz is an avid supporter of the pro-life movement and the defunding of Planned Parenthood nationwide, the elimination of same-sex marriage, less restrictions on guns, the repeal of ACA, and the dismantling of net neutrality, among other platforms.
So why would women of all people vote for someone who seems to have the complete opposite idea about things that can directly affect them? The answer is complex but can easily be fit into one word: hypocrisy.
It’s easy to blame white heterosexual men for the issues our patriarchal society enforces. And, yeah, they are the majority of the problem. But white women aren’t saints either. As Rebecca Traister says in the book Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger, “Women’s anger isn’t always progressive. White women, who enjoy proximal power from their association with white men, have often served as the white patriarchy’s most eager foot soldiers.”
Maybe you are a white woman who didn’t vote for someone who could potentially take your reproductive rights away, among other things. Maybe you voted for your Democratic candidate who supports women’s rights to healthcare and commodities that many are deprived of in a country run by men. But that doesn’t take away any of the accountability we as white women must face in the world where human rights are constantly on the line.
Time and time again, the weight falls upon women of color. In the O’Rourke/Cruz race, 95% of black women voted for O’Rourke, a candidate whose platform relies on the support of ACA, reproductive rights, marriage equality, and universal background checks for gun purchases. And that’s not fair. We can’t keep relying on black women to do the jobs we’ve been neglecting, or doing the bare minimum and expecting a large change because that’s the world we’re used to.
We need to stop acknowledging the power of other white women when it so often works against our own interests. We as white women enjoy the privilege being white gives us and no amount of “progressive anger” can make your privilege go away. Privilege is a deconstructing of old ideals and a rebuilding of new ones. It’s a game of acknowledging, supporting, and using privilege to help benefit other communities.
We live in a world defined by rights. And actively deciding to give up your rights and the rights of others like you is not only unfair and unjust, it’s detrimental.