Goddammit US politics

[here_inmyhead]

Usually I hate ~*~white people suck~*~ posts, but this is important to read.

In a nutshell: Among voters, 94 percent of Black women, 90 percent of Black men, 61 percent of Latinas, and 49 percent of Latinos in Texas voted for Wendy Davis.

Meanwhile, just 32 percent of white Texas women who voted did so for Wendy Davis.

You’ll hear that Greg Abbott “carried” women voters in Texas. Anyone who says that is also saying this: that Black women and Latinas are not “women,” and that carrying white women is enough to make the blanket statement that Abbott carried all women. That women generally failed to vote for Wendy Davis. As if women of color are some separate entity, some mysterious other, some bizarre demographic of not-women.

wtf. I voted for Wendy Davis; why couldn't more than 32% of my own race do the same?

What's the point of having a democracy if the majority of the people are too stupid to think about the well-being of their own country? That is, when they're not sticking their heads in the sand and thinking only about themselves?

This post has been crossposted with Dreamwidth at http://shamanicshaymin.dreamwidth.org/101917.html. Pick your poison. Mwoiiiiiiiing~!

Comments

Let's commiserate.

[dioschorium.livejournal.com]

I don't understand it, either. If I'd changed my registration in time, I would have voted for the incumbent senator, who just barely lost to her frothingly hateful opponent.

"[S]ticking their heads in the sand and thinking only about themselves" may be the exact reason that only 32 percent of women in your own ethnicity decided not to vote for Wendy Davis. That is, they thought their white privilege was more important than their struggles as women (or, rather uterus-bearers). That's just my hypothesis.

Re: Let's commiserate.

[insanepurin.livejournal.com]

Ignorance is bliss, but in the case of these women, it's destructive. Your vote matters, and they won't realize what they're losing until it's too late.

[queer-theory.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this. That looks like a very interesting read, and I'm sending it to my sister too because I know she'll be interested. I was very disappointed to see that Wendy Davis had lost (and I don't even live in Texas, though I have family there who likely didn't vote for her >_>). That the narrative is that "women voters" went for the other guy is really frustrating too.

I'm trying to ignore most of my own state results (I can't stand our incumbent congressman, who I knew would be re-elected, alas), but we did at least get one thing right. There was a proposition on the ballot that would have made teacher's jobs and salaries entirely dependent on student test scores, and fortunately, people saw how terrible an idea that would be.

[insanepurin.livejournal.com]

There was a proposition on the ballot that would have made teacher's jobs and salaries entirely dependent on student test scores, and fortunately, people saw how terrible an idea that would be.

Oh dear lord. By the time I graduated from my high school, thousands of perfectly competent teachers were laid off because the students didn't score high enough on their standardized tests. Not only is "teaching to the test" absolute bullshit and doesn't help anyone learn anything whatsoever, a lot of the students come from poor and impoverished neighborhoods, so they struggle more than the average student. Neither the students or the teachers (especially if they're doing their best to help these kids) should be punished for it.