OPED: Working-class whites aren't the only group that needs media coverage
In the 2016 presidential election, 90 percent of black women were with Hillary; only 41 percent of white women were. In the Virginia governor’s race, 91percent of black women voted for Democrat Ralph Northam; merely 35 percent of white males also aided in Northam’s victory. Finally, more than 98 percent of the black women who voted in Alabama’s special election for the U.S. Senate supported Democrat Doug Jones.
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]The notion that the votes of black women are saving America dismisses the reality that black women care about issues that are unique to our life circumstances.
It is well known that women earn 83 cents to every dollar a man earns. What is less known is the black and Latina women earn 63 cents to that same dollar. Black mothers have become prominent advocates against police violence in communities of color. African-American women have disproportionately higher rates of HIV/AIDS, yet the Trump Administration has done away with a long-standing government initiative studying the disease.
When the media credits black women with saving America when, in actuality, we’re just trying to save ourselves, the media is glossing over the many issues that are relevant to this consistent voting block.
Conversely, the media has done numerous deep dives into the working-class voters across America.
J.D. Vance’s best-selling analysis of his Appalachian family, “Hillbilly Elegy,” became the Rosetta Stone that journalists turned to when analyzing the priorities of this demographic.
Big-city journalists write about their weeklong road trips to the middle of America where they had conversations at diners, bars and chain stores to find out that working-class voters have faith in the current administration and say coal jobs are coming back to America, even though they are skeptical.
Of course, these journalists are really only visiting working-class white folks. Millions of people of color are in the working class and nary a journalist has devoted column space or screen time to their stories.
If they did, there would be an understanding that there are different needs in communities of color. For example, not all people of color are poor. And there would be an acknowledgement that working-class voters of color have reasons for not voting.
Maybe the stories would mirror the social media pages of my family members where apathy is rampant. They don’t go to the polls because they believe the odds are stacked so high against them that it makes no difference who sits in the Oval Office. They believe there is no one to vote for because all of the candidates are poisonous.
http://www.heraldsun.com/opinion/article193422419.html
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