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Ida Bae Wells

@nhannahjones

Nov 9

The economic anxiety argument is the exact same rationalization for Trump winning that we saw in 2016. The exact same. I wrote about this then. It took too many too long to listen. Now here we are again when we absolutely should know better. It is part of the process of justifying the country to itself and the majority of white American voters who chose a man who said he would be a dictator on day 1, who has threatened to round millions in camps, who has targeted transgender people, who ran a racist and misogynistic campaign, who has threatened to jail his political opponents and shutter news orgs and has promoted violence against media and adversaries. This comes from a deep need to absolve and normalize and this, too is dangerous. America has the strongest economy in the world and that doesn’t mean people aren’t struggling, they are, but polling is already showing it’s perception of economy not actual economy that led people to vote for Trump.

And yet, Black Americans, who are disproportionately working class, hold collectively close to zero wealth, who have the highest unemployment rates even in a good economy did NOT vote for the man that his own former generals called a fascist. What that tells you is that vote was about perceived loss of status. What elected Trump was demographic anxiety — his campaign ran explicitly on it, explicitly! — and so many people whose job it is to dispassionately deal with facts still do not want to deal with that.

Let’s say however, economic issues were the reason. It still doesn’t change the fact that the majority of white voters were willing to vote for someone who has threatened to terminate the Constitution, whose own generals called a fascist, because they think groceries are too high or they wish they could by a home. This is exactly how autocrats come to power. We in the press must rise to the occasion and see what’s happening with clarity so we can best do our jobs. Our delusions have not served us well. The stakes are too high for us to indulge them.

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Ida Bae Wells

@nhannahjones

Nov 6

We must not delude ourselves in this moment. Multiracial democracy in the United States is less than 60 years old. It has always been contested, often violently so. It has always been fragile. Since this nation's inception large swaths of white Americans -- including white women -- have claimed a belief in democracy while actually enforcing a white ethnocracy. In the face of shifting demographics where white Americans will lose their numeric majority, we see a growing embrace of autocracy to keep the "legitimate" rulers of this country in power. History teaches us that we are in a perilous moment.

The first time America attempted multiracial democracy was during Reconstruction at the end of the Civil War. A white majority in order to unify after a contested election succumbed to those who wanted to violently reinstate a white ethnocracy in what became known as the period of Redemption. Black Americans were stripped of their newly obtained citizenship rights for nearly a century in the name of national unity.

It was naive to believe that if Kamala Harris avoided discussing her race and gender, that if she evaded so-called identity politics, that she would nullify the liability of being a Black woman seeking the presidency in a country where racism and misogyny are embedded in the culture. This is a country that responded to a multiracial electorate sending the first Black president to the White House with a *minority* of the white vote by electing an openly white racist man over the person who could have become the nation's first woman president.

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Ida Bae Wells

@nhannahjones

Oct 8

https://twitter.com/c4jdhowardu/status/1842921426862412200

Democracy Summit 2024 on Covering Oligarchy is underway. Watch on livestream here.

https://twitter.com/c4jdhowardu/status/1842921426862412200

Political scientist Jeffrey Winters opens Democracy Summit 2024 with a primer on oligarchy. He tells journalists that megadonor is an inaccurate term and not neutral because donors give without expecting something in return.

Professor Winters says that oligarchy impacts democracy by limiting democracy, controlling the agenda and narrowing our political choices.

Read 27 tweets

Ida Bae Wells

@nhannahjones

Jun 7

I really wish rich, out-of-touch folks who nothing about education would just stop. 1) Read the fine print. THIS IS A GOVT VOUCHER PROGRAM. Voucher programs have not been shown to improve results for poor Black children because most cannot get into high-quality private schools. 2) Read the fine print. All of the money is coming from taxpayers, ie. the government. Roc Nation is not funding this, it is just launching an educational campaign that maybe it is being paid to do. I'm researching. But certainly, it's involvement is to convince poor Black parents to leave the public schools. 3) What do you think that $300 million could do for improving those low-performing public schools? 4) It is a lie that these programs do not take from public-school funding. Fewer kids in the classroom means fewer dollars to the school. 5) This is a windfall to the city's private schools at the expense of the public ones that most kids attend.

Stop playing with us. Not only do students who go to private schools on vouchers not perform better, 1 out of 5 leaves the private school and actually see improved academic results by returning to the public school. brookings.edu/articles/resea…

This is no different than the right-wing efforts in Arizona, Florida and elsewhere just because they put a Black face on it.

Read 8 tweets

Ida Bae Wells

@nhannahjones

Jun 5

What we are witnessing, once again, is the alignment of white power against racial justice and redress. We now have a legal landscape that takes the very laws created to eliminate the anti-Black caste system and uses them destroy racial justice efforts. The Supreme Court has determined actual school segregation is fine, but efforts to remedy it are unconstitutional.

The courts have determined the almost complete exclusion of Black women from venture capital is legal — Black women get just .34 percent of these funds — but efforts to address that disparity violate the 14th Amendment, written to ensure BLACK people equal protection.

Black people are about 5 percent of US doctors, but HBCU medical schools have been targeted and threatened with lawsuits if they specifically seek to help Black people become doctors.

Read 9 tweets

Ida Bae Wells

@nhannahjones

May 24

Can you show me the data that shows that private school teachers are better qualified? See, here’s the thing, you all think your voucher will pay for the Daltons of the world. It won’t. And Dalton won’t take your kids anyway. Your kids will be at some low/budget private school that doesn’t have to adhere to any academic standards and the rich parents who were already sending their kids to the Daltons of the world will just get a big fat rebate they don’t need on the taxpayers dime. Y’all are delusional.

Further, many of these voucher movements are not bubbling up from parents. When polled, public schools parents consistently rate their own schools high.

The nationalization of liberation market-place rhetoric has convinced you all that private means better. Private just means not publicly funded. Private schools can discriminate. They don’t have to adhere to standards. They might be excellent. They might be terrible. We see everyday that private businesses fail or get rich while producing inferior products. Stop being brainwashed.

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