Three Good Reads

[Content Note: Misogyny; racism.]

1. Andrea Grimes: "White Women: Let's Get Our Shit Together."

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.

The story does not begin and end with "men" and "women"; we have to look at which men, which women—particularly if the Democratic Party is ever going to decide to come out fighting hard on issues like immigration reform and moving the gamepiece aggressively forward, rather than backward, on reproductive rights.

Once more, with feeling: Greg Abbott and the Republican Party did not win women. They won white women. Time and time again, people of color have stood up for reproductive rights, for affordable health care, for immigrant communities while white folks vote a straight "I got mine" party ticket—even when they haven't, really, gotten theirs.

Read the whole thing here.

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2. EricaJoy: "The Other Side of Diversity."

Being in therapy has forced me to process my emotions, to understand what is going on in the background cycles of my mind. This has helped to identify exactly what effect being a black woman in tech, being the outlier for 13 years, has had on me. For those who like bullet points, I'll provide those here:

* I feel alone every day I come to work, despite being surrounded by people, which results in feelings of isolation.
* I feel like I stick out like sore thumb every day.
* I am constantly making micro-evaluations about whether or not my actions will be attributed to my being "different."
* I feel like my presence makes others uncomfortable so I try to make them feel comfortable.
* I feel like there isn't anyone who can identify with my story, so I don't tell it.
* I feel like I have to walk a tightrope to avoid reinforcing stereotypes while still being heard.
* I have to navigate the expectation of stereotypical behavior and disappointment when it doesn't happen (e.g. my not being the "sassy black woman").
* I frequently wonder how my race and gender are coloring perceptions of me.
* I wonder if and when I've encountered racists (the numbers say it's almost guaranteed that I have) and whether or not they've had an effect on my career.
* I feel a constant low level of stress every day, just by virtue of existing in my environment.
* I feel like I've lost my entire cultural identity in effort to be part of the culture I've spent the majority of the last decade in.

The stress and isolation I mentioned have really taken their toll on me.

Read the whole thing here.

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3. Erik Loomis: "Postmortem."

Democrats need to just stop trying to appeal to old white people. White men voted for the GOP 64-34. It is a loser strategy. ...Heard a bunch about the North Carolina race last night and all the discussion about how Ebola, ISIS, and immigration dominated voters’ agenda. When I hear those three things in this context, I hear three words: racism, racism, and racism.

...Democrats have to rethink their midterm election strategy is a very real way. It's one thing when there's a presidential campaign. But the politics of midterm elections means that the same types of political calculations don't work. How do you do that? You make your party about actual issues that young people and people of color care about. You support legalizing marijuana and prison reform. You support a vigorous government jobs program. You embrace immigration all the way, demonizing those who oppose a path to citizenship and the decriminalization of undocumented immigrants as racists. You make a $15 national minimum wage central to your campaign strategy. You have to call for student debt forgiveness. You have to make your party the party of the poor and the non-white, and not just in the passive way. If the racists and the plutocrats don't like that, well, they weren't going to vote for you anyway.

Read the whole thing here.