Kamala's Hidden Hurdle: 'Whitelash' Among White Women

Harris path to the Presidency is blocked more by institutional racism than gender bias among white, non-college educated, suburban women.

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The biggest obstacle for Kamala Harris to overcome is less ingrained gender stereotypes among suburban women, and more institutionalised racism in white America.

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My morning ritual always unfolds the same way, a hum of the kettle then the drip-dropping of boiled water through my coffee filter. The fragrant aroma of the black gold for me is less poetry in motion and more creature of habit instinct.

Same routine, no matter where in the world I am based. This morning was no different, drip-coffee and Scotsman newspaper app. Yet this particular morning had me pawing through Jane Bradley’s opinion column (“Why suburban women's love of Donald Trump means his victory is certain in sexist USA”) with growing disagreement.

Ms Bradley’s core contention is that gender stereotyping is so ingrained in American culture among men and women, that it’s “highly unlikely” they would elect a female President.

Let me be clear: I do not disagree with the assertion that America does indeed suffer from an deeply-set gender stereotyping in the cultural ether. Clearly any eyeing up of data points demonstrates that this is, indeed the case.

What I am disputing is Ms Bradley’s claim that this gender stereotyping is pushing Suburban women into the arms of the Trump campaign.

Firstly, internalised gender stereotyping did not in 2020 boost Trump. Secondly, is currently not doing so at the moment according to available polling data. And thirdly, the 2016 election case-point was less a story of suburban women being unable to imagine a female President, and more about white suburban women disliking the Democratic candidate [Hillary Clinton].

As of today, Harris is leading Trump among suburban women, and is doing so with better numbers than Biden achieved. The issue lurking in 2024 with suburban women, as with 2016, is with white suburban women.

I contend that the real obstacle for Kamala Harris becoming the first female President is specifically with white suburban women; much more-so than the gender-stereotyping that undoubtedly does factor in.

Less about gender, more about race

When Ms Bradley writes “Mr Trump received around 44 per cent of their votes in that election”, she is missing a number of important points.

I really want to dispute her numbers here for starters.

According to ‘Public Opinion Strategies’ (POS) election night (2020) survey we discover that Trump’s electoral appeal does not come from suburban women more generally. In fact POS data for that 2020 election found that

“election night data shows an uptick in support for Biden among suburban women”

According to POS, Trump landed 40 percent with Suburban women on election night 2020. That actually markedly worse for Trump than in 2016, when Hillary Clinton secured 46 percent over Trump’s 42 percent.

Put simply, POS data suggests Trump performed worse in 2020 than in 2016 on election night with suburban women.

But if we keep digging we discover something which supports my theory that the issue is less about suburban women refusing to consider female candidates, more institutional racism among white ‘suburban mom’ society.

POS data found that Trump in 2020 “performed better among white suburban women”

Suburban women vote Democrat over Republican consistently, and did so in 2016 (for Hillary) and again in 2020. In fact, Trump’s 2016 share among suburban women was the worst performance with this demographic until his 2020 share. This simply doesn’t suggest that gender stereotyping among suburban women - however real this phenomena surely is - is playing anything like a decisive role favouring Trump at the expense of female Presidential candidates.

It did not in 2016 and is not in 2024.

Furthermore, Trump’s 2020 share among suburban women was hardly a story of a surge of support among this demographic despite Ms Bradley’s characterisation.

But what did happen was Trump’s increased traction with white suburban women.

This is a critical factor now in 2024 as Kamala Harris stands for election for the Presidency.

Polling for NBC (February) finds that Biden led Trump among women voters by 10 percentage points (50 percent v 40 percent), and with suburban women by 6 percentage points (49 percent to 43 percent).

Kamala is actually doing better than those Biden number. Polling for CNN (SPSS) finds that Harris has 55 percent to Trump’s 39 percent (Biden had 49v43).

So Kamala Harris is not facing an issue among suburban women more generally, despite the claims made by Bradley in her compelling Scotsman column. The issue is institutional racism among white suburban women.

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PEW RESEARCH expands on this intersection between gender and race in terms of US voting over the years. If we examine the PEW data we can conclude a few things.

First: white women have been trending more Republican than Democrat, post-Obama Presidency (I’ll come onto how this is a white backlash against the Obama Presidency in a minute)

Secondly: the aforementioned trend is a complex story of non-college educated white women breaking heavily for the GOP (whereas college educated white women breaking more for the Democrats).

I think we can conclude a few things from these points. Not least that the underlying issue is racialism ingrained in US society. It is hardly surprising that white women who go off to college are less inclined to engage in the ‘whitelash’ (white backlash) post-Obama. Not least since they have experienced a multi-cultural educational experience for years as an undergraduate student.

As with both men and women, those most obsessed about ethnic minorities or so-called ‘floods’ of ‘illegals’ entering the country derives from those least likely to be exposed to ethno-cultural diversity.

‘Whitelash’ in white America

Sure, Trump’s election victory in 2016 was in part due to the unpopularity of Hilary Clinton due to NAFTA in the rustbelt states or perceptions of her as a foreign policy hawk in a country tired of the neoconservative wars of aggression. But it was also about something else, something far more significant in the cultural milieu.

2016 was the start of white America’s ‘whitelash’, after two terms of an articulate black first family. Trump, trading in his racist rhetoric, was the avatar for this backlash - in fact he fed it long before running with his birtherism lies.

Many lecturers will insist with validity that modern America is not going back to the days of Plessy vs Fergusson and the vile spectres of Jim Crow.

As Mark D. Naison, history professor at Fordham University in New York City explained in 2016, “You hold a racist demonstration in this country and the anti-racist protesters will have as many whites and blacks in their group, maybe more,” Adding, “We are definitely not post-racial, but we aren’t going back to the days of legal segregation.”

Absolutely true, I agree. And I should know, I lectured in Shandong Agricultural University in Anglo-American society and culture. So believe me when I say this is very much my bailiwick.

But that is ignoring another slice of white America which never really left the reconstruction era. This segment of America are not calling for a return to segregation, but they are trading in the same legal strategies, policies and rhetoric designed to deny black America its place at the table.

GOP politicians across the American south constantly engage in antics to undermine and deny black Americans ballot-box access. Whether it be deeply gerrymandered redistricting (constituency boundaries in British speak), or voter ID laws the goal is clear: stop the blacks voting. Equally, with rhetorical hysteria against affirmative action and ‘DEI’, America is experiencing something of a racist renaissance post-Obama Presidency.

This is the contextual reality which explains why white suburban women, in particular those without college degrees, are skewing for Trump increasingly since 2012. It’s whitelash, it’s ingrained institutional racism in white American suburban culture.

And it’s the real obstacle which could deny Kamala Harris her presidency. This is by far the larger challenge facing the Democratic nominee than the gender stereotyping that Ms Bradley (fairly enough) highlights in her Scotsman column. It’s merely the twin challenges are manifestly of a different scale and size.

Wider contemporary examples of institutional racism in US culture

MOVING AWAY from the US election cycle, I’ll take this opportunity to briefly remind voters of my twin articles I published July last year.

They both are pertinent as part of a wider discussion on whitelash, institutional racism and prejudice in contemporary American society.

My first was ‘The racist apologism for ante-bellum slavery in Ron DeSantis Florida is part of a sordid and long US tradition’

In it I explore how Florida Governor Ron deSantis Florida 2023 Social Studies curriculum is in reality part of a depressingly long American discourse acting as ante-bellum slavery apologism.

When the failed Republican Presidential hopeful insisted Black people benefited from slavery by learning skills like “being a blacksmith”, he was mimicking the racial apologism for slavery going back through American history from Ulrich Phillips and beyond. The idea that African-American kids in Floridian schools should be taught the benefits of their ancestors enslavement is beyond sick. But it again reinforces my contention that there has been a racist renaissance post-Obama. A whitelash that is the real danger to a President Kamala Harris.

In 2023 a leading candidate for the GOP Presidential nomination actually thought it’s a benefit to echo Ulrich Phillips pro-slavery apologism. Just last year he argued the forced enslavement of blacks really just represented a ‘skills development’ or ‘vocational’ education programme. He now backs the insurrectionist, sex-offending, secret-stealing convicted felon Trump.

Yes dear reader, ‘white suburban mom’ culture has a deep, real and pernicious issue with ingrained systemic racism.

My second article last year underscores the reality of the ‘whitelash’ concept, when I received a fair amount of abuse from my American readers for my deSantis article. In it (“I’m shocked but doubling down”), I explored the sociological as well as psychological phenomena underscoring societal conspiracies to silence and deny.

The bottom-lines…

Look, it’s no secret I yearn for a Kamala Harris victory and am firmly in the ‘never Trump’ camp (“A Prosecutor to Beat the Convicted Criminal”). But if Trumpism is to be defeated then we need to confront reality as it is, and head-on.

Institutional racism in white America could deny America it’s second opportunity at having a female President. This is the single-biggest reason why Kamala Harris could lose, not gender stereotyping among suburban women (however real an issue that undoubtedly is)

In specific terms, a pernicious ‘whitelash’ racism among suburban white non-college educated women could deliver the sex-offending, secret-stealing convicted criminal back into the White House.

After all, this will prove to be an incredibly tight race, the outcome could come down to a few hundred thousand votes in a handful of battleground states. The same institutional racism that delivered Trump in 2016, and enabled deSantis slavery apologism in 2023 remains undimmed in certain parts of the land of the free.

For my part, I say vote Blue no matter who this election cycle. A President Harris this November, reinforced with a large enough down-ballot Democrat victory could finally, just maybe, break the post-Obama whitelash bigotry that MAGA Trumpism thrives upon.

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Alternatively why not make a one-off donation? All support is appreciated