White Women Don't Fail Us Now!

White women have mobilized in record numbers on Zoom tonight for Kamala Harris. Do I dare hope that a majority will show up as allies and vote against Trump and MAGA?

I’m writing this post at 9:50 pm Eastern Time. I just gave my kids homemade Mango popsicles. I drank my chai. I sat down to check my mail and doomscroll on social media. I had no idea what day it was because the last week has felt like 14 years.

I forgot that activist and organizer Shannon Watt’s "White Women: Answer the Call for Kamala Harris” Zoom and fundraiser was scheduled for tonight. I just read a post that said they are about raise $2 million dollars and with over 150,000 white women in attendance. #AnswerTheCall2024 is trending nationwide. Pink, Glennon Doyle, Connie Britton and other famous white women have joined the biggest Zoom call in history to rally other white women for Kamala Harris.

Now, if it wasn’t manifestly clear from my entire existence, I am not a white woman. “So, why did you care about this call, Wajahat?” Excellent question, dear reader! Allow me to blunt at the risk of offending some of my readers with an anecdotal truth: many people of color always hesitate when it comes to trusting white women to do the right thing when it comes to joining us as we fight for justice, equity and progress. I understand this is an unfair stereotype, but there is a reason why “Karen” is a universally understood and acknowledged reality. Specifically, we remember a small majority of white women voting for Donald Trump, a vulgarian, in 2016 even though he was going up against Hillary Clinton. We remember how a larger number of white women went for Trump in 2020 after he spent four years tearing this country apart.

I’m in Virginia where three years ago 75 percent of white women without college degrees voted for Glenn Youngkin for Governor in Virginia. Overall, a majority of white women, around 57%, went for Youngkin who ran a campaign of hate centered on the manufactured bogeyman of CRT. A majority of white women have voted for Republican candidates since 1952, only breaking for Lyndon B. Johnson and for Bill Clinton’s second term. Again, I know this is not representative of all white women, and it is wrong to stereotype, but we also have to take account the data and history.

I wrote the following in a 2021 article explaining this phenomenon:

It makes sense. They vote for their interests, which is preserving whiteness at all costs. When push comes to shove, many white women in this country have historically shoved people of color out of the way. These suburban, PTA moms were “segregation’s constant gardeners” who helped keep Jim Crow alive; they upheld white power at the expense of Black and brown women as they marched towards suffrage; and they even came out to derail the Equal Rights Amendment, thanks to the advocacy of conservative firebrand Phyllis Schlafly, who argued that (white) women, and their (white) families, were better under the current, unequal system that promoted patriarchy and white supremacy.

All of this is to say that a lot of people of color the past week have been talking, and we’ve been curious if indeed the year 2024 will be different. Will enough white women voters finally side with a multi-racial coalition seeking freedom and progress? Will they go against Trump and the GOP who literally want to take them back to a time before they had control of their bodies? Will they reject the comfort of white supremacy and instead settle for the short term discomfort which will bring long term growth, joy, and healing for the country?

Well, if this call is any indication, a lot of white women have decided they are not going back, and they are learning from Black women who have led the way. In the past week, women of all ethnicities have been rallying their communities, mobilizing, organizing and raising funds for Kamala Harris and her 2024 campaign. Black men have also stepped up and I just received an invite for South Asian men to do the same.

I feel hopeful and energized.

White women, let’s go! I have faith in you!