Election results underscore the power of ignorance, and the power of whiteness

“People absorb whatever is beamed onto their devices and take it as fact,” writes Shay Stewart Bouley. (Image by Moore Studio/ Getty Images)

When I was growing up in Chicago, every morning we got the daily newspaper. Most of the time, it was the Chicago Sun-Times, occasionally the Chicago Tribune. Most days, we also got the Chicago Defender, the city’s Black newspaper. In the evening, we almost always watched the local news on the television and at least a few times a week we watched the national news programs that followed the local news. By the time I was in high school, I often grabbed a newspaper to read on my almost hourlong elevated train ride to school. I grew up in a family where we not only consumed the news, but we often talked about it over dinner or while running errands.

Even as an adult—and until my father’s death a few years ago—discussing the news and political climate was a family custom. It’s a tradition I have carried on with my own kids, both of whom are now adults. Once upon a time, this behavior was a norm across racial lines but in today’s world, it’s an anomaly. To be entirely frank about it, I believe our lack of shared news experiences played a role in the outcome of this year’s presidential election. 

As a Black woman, I won’t lie — when it was clear that Kamala Harris had lost her bid for the White House, my initial reaction was that it was racism and sexism that caused her loss. 

Two weeks post-election, though, it has become clear — at least from my perch — that the reasons for her loss are complex and while there is no doubt that racism and misogyny both played significant roles, it was not always overt but rather laid the foundation for voters to be wooed by Trump’s lies.

I never expected a blowout for Harris; this country is too deeply fractured, and racism and sexism are very real. And the Democratic Party dropped the ball in connecting with voters, much like they did in 2016 when they didn’t take Donald Trump seriously, instead assuming from their bubble of elitism that people would shun the buffoon. It didn’t work then, and it didn’t work now because — despite being an obvious joke of a candidate —Trump connects with people. He connects with people, often across racial lines, who identify with his entirely fabricated “everyman” shtick, even when it is to their personal detriment to support him. 

Trump’s visit to McDonald’s, where he tried out the jobs, was widely mocked by progressives, but it also resonated with people — same with his ride in the garbage truck. Despite the racism that oozed from every pore of his campaign, nothing — not even his surrogates denigrating Latinos — stopped them from voting for him (including plenty of Latinos). In fact, the only groups that stayed loyal to Harris were by and large Black people. Particularly Black women. 

We are living in a time when misinformation is prolific, and literacy rates are far too low. We are living in media silos where mainstream media has been decimated. Too many places no longer have daily newspapers and the internet’s a-la-carte access to news is inaccessible for too many and sometimes not to be trusted even when it is accessible. Even when you can access the news on TV, it is often presented with the slant of its conservative corporate owners and overlords — just like the internet news and perhaps more so. I was reminded of that on election night as I toggled between CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. Reality was what they chose to make it and without adequate literacy skills, you can’t tell between news or propaganda, which is why accessing news on social media is a dangerous affair that now has real life implications for all of us. 

Far too many younger people are accessing their news on sites like TikTok, where anyone with good video skills and personality can create seemingly knowledgeable content with nary a fact checker in site. Older people seem to prefer sites such as Facebook, where memes and rants are now more likely to show up in your feeds due to Meta’s suppression of actual news and their algorithms. As a result, people absorb whatever is beamed onto their devices and take it as fact. 

Pair this with our country’s abysmal literacy rates and you understand why days after the election, there were reports of people Googling “what are tariffs?” and “Can I change my vote?”

Despite months of people frantically warning that nothing Trump was offering was good, too many were stuck in their silos or unable to grasp what was being said. They just knew they felt good voting for him, and it sounded like Trump meant them well. Many took his threats against individuals and groups as hyperbole instead of the actual warning that it was. Some believed him when he said he was not connected to Project 2025, only to now learn that he is nominating several folks connected to the conservative policy blueprint as key cabinet members. Others are learning that while they were cheering for the possible demise of Obamacare, they didn’t realize that the Affordable Care Act they rely on is “Obamacare.” Or that the tariffs they were passionate about will create additional financial stress on their pocketbooks. 

Lots of people are now realizing that elections have consequences and that words matter. For many, however, the words of a white man—even a proven liar—will always carry more weight due to the perception that somehow white men are more competent and trustworthy than everyone else, no matter how often this is proved wrong. And that is largely because of a steady diet of questionable reality tailored to their preferences that covers the bad taste of their unexamined bias and racism — giving us the perfect combination of ignorance and fear for our mutually assured destruction.

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