Who’s To “Blame” For The 2016 Election

To say that this 2016 election was and continues to be a waking nightmare is a massive understatement. To say that I am extremely upset and disappointed in the United States of America is also an understatement. I truly believe that over 60 million Americans made the wrong decision for shortsighted, shallow and selfish reasons. And I keep hearing excuse after excuse about how the DNC is at fault, or third-parties, or the media, or Nate Silver, or email servers, or our increasingly growing echo chambers. But let’s stop the bullshit right here. The fact that we now have elected Donald Trump as president rests squarely on the shoulder of white voters.

Let’s look at the statistics: 58% of white voters chose Trump. Take that statistic in. Over half of all white American voters honestly thought that Donald Trump was worth electing. They decided that Hillary Clinton was a hateful distrustful shrew who shouldn’t be allowed in office. They decided that a woman with over 30 years of experience in law is less qualified than a man with several bankruptcies under his belt who has never even been in office or served in the military. And this is a classic white supremacist mentality as any minority who applies for a job that they are overqualified for but gets passed over for a less experienced white male can tell you.

And for those of you saying that minorities also let people down, let’s pull up some more numbers. According to a 2016 estimate, there are 324,720,797 people in America. America is 72.5% white, which leaves 28% nonwhites. Doing the math means that there are approximately 90,921, 823 nonwhites in this country. Again these are nonwhite people, NOT nonwhite voters and after crunching a bunch of numbers I estimated around 50,000,000 (and I’d argue that that value is too high). In order to win, literally every single minority voter would have had to vote for Clinton, which is ridiculous. Also, every ethnic group voted for Clinton over Trump, except one. Guess which one? So let’s put that to rest.

Now, let’s look at the statistics for third-party voters. Approximately 80% of the votes that went to third party candidates were cast by white voters*. Let that sink in. When push came to shove, minorities (namely black women) turned out and made sure to vote for a candidate who isn’t a xenophobic, sexist, racist, sociopathic liar. And white voters who continued to assure minorities that they won’t make the wrong decision decided to cast their votes for two candidates who didn’t stand a chance of winning instead of showing solidarity.

Let me paint you a picture. A year ago, I had an honest conversation with my mother about what a possible Trump presidency could have. We had numerous discussions about this and about the importance of voting and getting involved in politics. And I was able to sway her to care enough about politics to support Hillary Clinton. And I understand that New York is a blue state and that there wasn’t a chance that she would support Trump, but that’s not the point. I worked long and hard to lay out the facts, get her to understand what’s at stake, and not belittle her for her choices and she LISTENED.

In contrast, I constantly hear anecdotal stories from white citizens who decided that after a couple of awkward dinners with their conservative parents, they decided to give up, block their families and say “La la la, this isn’t my fault. I’m one of the good ones.” I don’t know. Maybe you did try your absolute best. Maybe you didn’t. But the point is that you didn’t do like Beyonce and get in formation. You gave up, you dropped out, you left your conservative family’s political leanings as someone else’s problem. And quite frankly, that problem is now ours (ours being me and my POC/LGBT brothers and sisters).

White people love to bang the drum that all Muslims are responsible when a terrorist attack happens or that all black people are responsible for inner city crime. White people love to tell minorities to check ourselves, to not be too gay or too ethnic or too loud. Now is the time for the white majority to look internally and as a society ask the hard-hitting questions. Now is the time for you folks to stop saying “But I’m one of the good ones” and TALK to the “bad” ones. Now is the time to stop with the #NotAllWhites bullshit and assess your culture the same way you ask us to do, because if there is any division in America, it’s not between whites and nonwhites. It’s between white people and themselves.

*I starred this because this statistic is harder to confirm. I am perfectly willing to change this if I find a more accurate poll.