The nation is divided. One half of America is in mourning while the other half is sleeping peacefully in victory after electing former President Donald Trump back into office. And although the Black community showed up and out for Vice President Kamala Harris, most other demographics contributed to four more years of Trump.
In response to questions and ongoing confusion from Harris supporters about what possibly went wrong, one Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist eloquently lined it all out: Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the highly polarizing essay and book “The 1619 Project,” took to X to outline these discrepancies.
She contrasted the split vote within ethnic groups for Trump to the overwhelming 80 percent majority of Black folks against him. Hannah-Jones argued that the Black community “uniquely understand[s] this nation, and how awful it can get.” From generations of slavery to decades of Jim Crow, Black Americans have an experience that nobody else truly gets, which is why she says “we must stop lumping all non-white people into a single ‘of color’ group.”
The term “People of Color,” or POC, is a dangerous one for Black people, according to the Howard University professor, because “multiracial democracy in the United States is less than 60 years old,” she said. “It has always been fragile.”
According to exit polls conducted by NBC News, the Latinx vote was basically split between Trump and Harris, with the MAGA president collecting close to 60 percent of Latinx men and almost 40 percent Latinx women. Despite Trump’s anti-immigrant language, partial construction of the southern border wall and verbal commitment to mass deportations, Latinx voters still flocked to him. But Hannah-Jones said Black folks shouldn’t even be surprised.
“Anti-Blackness continues to be a powerful force in this country,” the author tweeted. And it’s not just white people who perpetuate this racism. “Anti-Blackness is deeply embedded in Latino cultures as well,” she said. “The interests of those who are part of that very large, multiracial, multi-nationality Latino category are not and not ever been necessarily aligned with those of Black people.”
Hannah-Jones emphasized America’s ability to elect the nation’s first Black president and immediately afterwards elect “an openly white racist man over the person who could have become the nation’s first woman president,” she wrote.
“It was naive to believe that if Kamala Harris avoided discussing her race and gender... that she would nullify the liability of being a Black woman seeking the presidency,” Hannah-Jones wrote on X.