When the arc of the moral universe bends, then breaks...
‘the BS, that it’s economics’
“So there’s this sense, right, that whiteness is under threat – the demographic shifts. The country is – all of these racially ambiguous children on Cheerios commercials are confusing the hell out of me… They voted for a crook, a person who they know is doing everything to undermine the so-called country that they love. And then they’re telling us the BS, that it’s economics.”
— Professor Eddie Glaude Jr. on MSNBC
I don’t subscribe to the theory that this election was lost because reasonable people can disagree on everyday issues like the price of butter or immigration. It’s the explanation that allows us all to pretend that this was like elections past. This was not that. While issues matter, this cycle issues took a back seat to character and values. Immigrants as vermin, and the economy, stupid redux, contrasted sharply with the fitness of each candidate. One was a con artist and convict; the other was black and a woman. The other issues weren’t overly complex, but for a good portion of white America, the choice was even simpler. Were Kamala’s explanations too convoluted? Not enough? Did the one debate he dared to show up for leave a question in anyone’s mind about fitness to serve? In contrast, his behavior throughout was consistent. He was vile and stupid. He told us ‘she was a low I.Q. individual,’ then proved he was. She reminded us that he was a crook. He sold bibles made in China and golden sneakers.
He had two issues— really three— one he would solve with tariffs, a fix that 97% of economists scoffed at. The other, immigration reform, amounted to deportation promises he could never keep because deporting 11 million human beings was costly both in dollars and human misery. And by the way, it would destroy the economy. But, hey, who cared? We all hate China and immigrants. And then there was that third issue— the one everyone who voted for him tried to ignore. The ex and future president was a convicted felon and likely traitor.
The exit polls were illuminating. White males overwhelmingly voted for Trump by 23% and white women followed along at 8%. When Hillary Clinton ran the margins were similar among white males who voted for Trump by a margin of 30%, white women by a margin of only 2%. In 2020 the margins for Trump within the same groups were 17% and 7%. The shift in the Hispanic vote was convincing. While they voted for Biden by a wide margin (17%), Kamala lost their vote convincingly by 12%, a shift of 29%. These numbers demonstrate a pattern that suggests a far simpler explanation for what transpired on election day.
Our historic racist and misogynist inclinations have to be factored into these results if only for consideration, despite the inconvenience of what that would suggest about our times. Some are too young to know others of us are older and our memory fades, but blacks were not awarded full citizenship in this nation until 1964. Meanwhile, women were second-class citizens until 1920— it took an amendment to the Constitution for women’s impertinence in wanting to vote to become a reality. In the 1970s, a nascent women’s movement was stopped dead in its tracks with wide support to halt ratification from conservative women. In 1982 the ratification deadline ended the effort. Their daughters and grandchildren are still here waiting. The cost of gaining civil rights for both groups was significant. For women piercing the glass ceiling has proved difficult, and the retribution for trying was the overturning of Roe v. Wade. For blacks, it has been a longer and harder trek that included marches and beatings, lynchings... and the deaths of innocents in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing which lit a fire under the movement for equal rights.
History lesson
Perhaps, few other than the black community remember the time and its historic import. It was September 15 1963 when four young girls were killed while attending Sunday School in Birmingham Alabama. A bomb planted in the church basement went off during services that Sunday. The children would be attending Sunday school in the basement that morning. The FBI investigation lasted more than 5 years under the guidance of Director J. Edgar Hoover, himself a racist. It ended with several suspects identified but no indictments. Segregation was the white extremists’ cause and the violence had been escalating ever since the Supreme Court struck down segregation in public schools. In part, their deaths were payback for the order to desegregate in Brown v. Board in 1954:
On September 9th, President John F. Kennedy took control of the Alabama National Guard, which Governor Wallace was using to block court-ordered desegregation of public schools in Birmingham. Around that time Robert Chambliss, who would later be named as a suspect in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, foreshadowed the violence to come when he told his niece, "Just wait until Sunday morning and they'll beg us to let them segregate."
— National Park Service. “16th Street Baptist Church Bombing (1963)”
Today we pretend that giving full citizenship to women and blacks somehow is evidence of our moral exceptionalism— bending that arc of the moral universe toward justice. Martin Luther King, Jr. just before the passage of the Voting Rights Act and after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is credited with a speech given in Montgomery in 1965 that indicated a hopeful time marking the beginnings of a post-racial America:
How long? No long, (Yes, sir) because “no lie can live forever.” (Yes, sir)
How long? Not long, (All right. How long) because “you shall reap what you sow.” (Yes, sir)
How long? (How long?) Not long: (Not long)
Truth forever on the scaffold, (Speak)
Wrong forever on the throne, (Yes, sir)
Yet that scaffold sways the future, (Yes, sir)
And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow,
Keeping watch above his own.
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. (Yes, sir)
— Martin Luther King, Jr. “Our God is Marching On!” 25 March 1965
It was an eventful two years:
September 15, 1963— 16th Street church bombing
November 22, 1963— Kennedy assassination
July 2, 1964— The Civil Rights Act passed by Congress
March 25, 1965— “arc of the moral universe” speech in Montgomery, AL
August 6, 1965— Voting Rights Act passed by Congress
Martin was repurposing a quote from Unitarian minister Theodore Parker who wrote in 1853:
I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.
— Ten Sermons on Religion (1853) ‘Justice and the conscience.”
Reprisal
Both Martin and Dr. Parker, each in his own time had reason to be hopeful, both would be disappointed.
The price for civil rights was high and came with deadly payback. Just as it did in Parker’s time, progress had a cost, and the cost had come due, It was a time for assassins:
Medgar Evers 1963 June
JFK 1963 November
James Chaney 1964 June
Michael Goodman 1964 June
Malcolm X 1965 February
Martin Luther King Jr. 1968 April
Robert F. Kennedy 1968 June
In the years that followed, progress was slowed. A more conservative time followed. Nixon, Ford, Reagan Bush 41, and Bush 43 were interspersed by Southern Democrats Carter and Clinton. The Obama miracle was followed by the Trump nightmares. The moral universe, if it even exists, has since bent both ways. In November 2024, it just may have been twisted and broken.
Those who view the recent election results without historical precedent have missed the point. To paraphrase Donald Trump, if God Herself came down and decided to run for president, and if She were black, the election would be close. However, She would still lose to a convicted felon, rapist, and all-around dirtbag— because he was white and better represented our values.