4 Ways White Political Forces Steal Elections And How We Can Stop It

A per­son­al tweet I sent out this week said: “Let’s be clear — and Christian: A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for racism.”

In one of the many post­mortem dis­cus­sions on Tuesday’s pri­ma­ry results, Cokie Roberts on Morning Joe said we were leav­ing race out of the ques­tions we’re ask­ing. She’s right. Donald Trump’s suc­cess isn’t just because of his enter­tain­ing flam­boy­ance, his mar­ket­ing brand, his expe­ri­enced self-pro­mo­tion, his busi­ness boast­ing, and his oth­er fab­ri­cat­ed “out­sider” iden­ti­ties that appeal to peo­ple who gen­uine­ly feel out­side of American pol­i­tics and life. At its core, Donald Trump’s cam­paign is about race — which is why this is about far more than pol­i­tics and par­ti­san­ship for many of us reli­gious lead­ers. When Roberts asked Trump if he was proud of the grow­ing reports about white school­child­ren ver­bal­ly attack­ing stu­dents of col­or and telling them they will soon have a wall built against them to keep them out of America, Trump react­ed by say­ing it was a “nasty” ques­tion. No, it was one of the few good ques­tions from jour­nal­ists that morning.

Donald Trump is the race can­di­date, pro­ject­ing white nation­al­ism and xeno­pho­bia, appeal­ing to fear and resent­ment, and always blam­ing peo­ple of oth­er races for the prob­lems of low-income white peo­ple. There is a long his­to­ry of that in the United States, recent­ly exem­pli­fied again by the KKK and oth­er white suprema­cists com­ing into the elec­toral con­ver­sa­tion and Trump’s unwill­ing­ness to be quick and clear about his rejec­tion of racial politics.

The pun­dits say work­ing class Republicans are in revolt against the Republican estab­lish­ment, which makes sense as those elites are ones who have sup­port­ed and ben­e­fit­ted from rigged mar­ket forces and glob­al­iza­tion that have turned all our eco­nom­ic rewards to the top 1 per­cent while aban­don­ing work­ing and mid­dle class peo­ple. Bernie Sanders is get­ting many of those angry white votes, too, in the Democratic pri­maries. But Sanders does­n’t blame “the oth­ers” as Trump does; he instead focus­es on the rich­est insti­tu­tions and peo­ple in America who have man­aged all this — the same ones Trump loves to brag about being part of with his osten­ta­tious lifestyle. (How many press con­fer­ences have you seen with the can­di­date’s expen­sive wines and steaks on dis­play while he proud­ly lists all of his prop­er­ties? Is this real­ly hap­pen­ing in America?) There is also a long his­to­ry of unit­ing work­ing peo­ple from all races against the forces that would both ignore and divide them. One kind of pop­ulism tries to divide those who have been mar­gin­al­ized; the oth­er kind tries to bring them together.

Donald Trump is clear­ly appeal­ing to our worst instincts, as many have said, but let’s be more clear: Donald Trump is appeal­ing to the worst instincts of white peo­ple, and American his­to­ry has shown how ugly and vio­lent those white instincts can be. He is right when he claims to be bring­ing out peo­ple that have nev­er vot­ed before — but he leaves out that those new vot­ers are angry white people.

At the same time we’re adding them to our vot­ing rolls, there are active polit­i­cal forces direct­ly engaged in try­ing to block and dimin­ish the turnout of black, Hispanic, Asian, and Muslim vot­ers. They’re doing so in four ways.

First, as Michelle Alexander explains in The New Jim Crow, polit­i­cal strate­gies now con­nect the delib­er­ate mass incar­cer­a­tion of black and brown men and women with the sub­se­quent and pur­pose­ful polit­i­cal dis­en­fran­chise­ment of those mil­lions of peo­ple of col­or when they return to society.

Second, delib­er­ate ger­ry­man­der­ing and mis­shap­ing of vot­ing dis­tricts cre­ates and pro­tects white vot­ing blocs and puts minori­ties togeth­er so as to not chal­lenge those white major­i­ty blocs. After sweep­ing vic­to­ries in 2010, new­ly elect­ed Republicans in state leg­is­la­tures and gov­er­nors’ man­sions across the coun­try took full advan­tage of Census-based redis­trict­ing to ger­ry­man­der in favor of white conservatives.

Third, the pas­sage of a slew of new vot­ing rules and reg­u­la­tions enact­ed since 2010 are again delib­er­ate attempts to reduce the votes of minori­ties and young peo­ple in what Rev. William Barber calls “the sec­ond career of ‘James Crow, Esq.’ ” In oth­er words, after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the 1960s dis­man­tled the overt Jim Crow laws that enforced seg­re­ga­tion and denied African Americans many basic rights, Jim Crow went to law school, became the more respectable “James Crow, Esq.,” and devised more sophis­ti­cat­ed and insid­i­ous ways to dis­en­fran­chise peo­ple of col­or. The his­toric elec­tion of 2008 brought an unprece­dent­ed num­ber of young peo­ple and peo­ple of col­or to the polls. The white con­ser­v­a­tive back­lash came in the 2010 mid-term elec­tions. As Myrna Pérezexplains in Sojourners magazine:

Since the 2010 elec­tion, 21 states have insti­tut­ed new vot­ing restric­tions – the biggest roll­back of the right to vote since the Jim Crow era. This year will be the first pres­i­den­tial elec­tion with many of these new bar­ri­ers in place, from requir­ing pho­to iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (which mil­lions of Americans do not have) to cur­tail­ing ear­ly vot­ing (which many cit­i­zens depend on to cast their bal­lots). On top of this, vot­ers will go to the polls in November with the fewest fed­er­al pro­tec­tions against racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in half a cen­tu­ry, due to a 2013 Supreme Court deci­sion gut­ting a key pro­vi­sion of the Voting Rights Act.

Fourth, there are efforts to bring new white vot­ers to the polls who are angry and resent­ful of America’s grow­ing racial diver­si­ty — basi­cal­ly, Trump’s constituency.

Sojourners has just released an impor­tant new video detail­ing some of these efforts at vot­er sup­pres­sion across the coun­try, and also lifts up some pos­i­tive efforts to expand access to vot­ing in some states. I encour­age you to watch this video to get an even bet­ter sense of what is at stake for our democ­ra­cy this year. Then share it with oth­ers. So here is an elec­tion strat­e­gy for peo­ple of faith from all races, for peo­ple of moral con­science in both par­ties who are against racist poli­cies and prac­tices, for every­one who believes that every American should have the right and great­est oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote, and for those who believe that access is absolute­ly essen­tial to the future of our democ­ra­cy. This should be a moral issue, not a par­ti­san one.

It is time for a new and pow­er­ful alliance between the faith com­mu­ni­ty, white vot­ers against racism, and democ­ra­cy advo­cates of all polit­i­cal stripes to unite togeth­er to reg­is­ter as many racial minori­ties and young peo­ple as pos­si­ble to vote — with the best efforts being led by lead­ers and orga­ni­za­tions of col­or — and then to mobi­lize the best pos­si­ble access to vot­ing on Election Day for every­one. Perhaps it’s time for cler­gy to show up on Election Day in polling places to help sup­port and secure the votes of those minor­i­ty vot­ers who are under attack. These are some moral march­ing orders for elec­tion 2016. We have about 8 months to do them.
Jim Wallis is pres­i­dent of Sojourners. His book, America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America, is avail­able now.
4 Ways White Political Forces Steal Elections and How We Can Stop It