What Post-Election Narratives Reveal About the United States

Since the election, the media has been full of thought pieces from liberal outlets and progressive commentators critiquing the Democratic Party’s emphasis on “identity politics” and subsequent alienation of the working class.

This election was indeed all about identity politics: a coded, intentional, and strategic effort orchestrated by conservatives over multiple decades. Race (Whiteness) was front and center—and the people have spoken.

Now, those of us working toward the conscious evolution of humanity face our own blame game about what went wrong.

Harmful Myths

Too often, post-election narratives perpetuate harmful myths. Current framing (even on the left) is a remnant of racialized capitalism that positions Black Americans, Indigenous people, and people of color as personally responsible for their lack of progress; positions public spending in communities of color as a “handout” instead of an investment; and leaves unchallenged an “us versus them” story.

As two Black women with decades-long careers in philanthropy, policy, and systems change, we are used to organizational leaders asking, “Why are you bringing up race? This is an income conversation.”

This, too, is coded, intentional, and strategic. This tendency isn’t limited to White “allies” but includes anybody who doesn’t want to do the work of dealing with collective identity issues.

Bringing up the disparities faced by Black, Indigenous, and people of color challenges core American myths.

Bringing up the disparities faced by Black, Indigenous, and people of color challenges core American myths, regardless of political leaning or stated commitment to social change. That’s the power of Whiteness. You can perpetuate a narrative without having to relate to or understand anyone else’s reality.

So, when a person of color shares an honest experience of living in the United States and how the so-called American dream—the idea that anyone can achieve success through hard work and determination—is for them a nightmare, they are called unpatriotic, even though creating the conditions that would enable everybody to embody this dream is the most patriotic thing one can do.

Enacting equitable policies around housing, healthcare, education, and everything we need to live into our humanity would increase our country’s economic capacity. As Mary Daly, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, has put it, “A range of studies, using different methods and closing different gaps, all point to the same thing: substantial gains from a more inclusive economy.”

The difference, she notes, if measured in terms of gross domestic product, works out to trillions of dollars. Yet we continue to play a zero-sum game in this country.

As described succinctly by Heather McGhee in her book The Sum Of Us, “The logical extension of the zero-sum story is that a future without racism is something white people should fear because there will be nothing good for them in it.”

A Pivotal Question

The 2024 presidential election presented the nation with a pivotal question: Are we going to choose democracy or Whiteness?

The nation chose Whiteness. Indeed, voters chose to elect the most extreme version of Whiteness, a demonstration of how far many people are willing to go to preserve White supremacy.

This is not new.

Throughout our social impact careers and lifetimes of living in the South (which is a graduate school education in and of itself), we continue to witness the country’s majority choosing Whiteness, while Black, Indigenous, and people of color don’t get to participate fully in shared prosperity.

Whiteness is unrelenting, ubiquitous, amorphous, and refuses to let itself go—even when doing so would elevate the working class and create broader economic opportunities.

On the individual level, this can look like a person earning minimum wage voting for a party with no plans to increase it in their state. We are quick as a nation to point to personal responsibility—telling Indigenous people and people of color to “catch up” without considering the factors causing the racial wealth gap in the first place.

The challenges we face—economic inequality, systemic racism, and the persistence of harmful narratives—are daunting but not insurmountable.

Organizationally, this can present in many ways—for instance, an unwillingness to provide affordable childcare in the workplace. For Black families with two children, the average cost of childcare is 42 percent of their median income. The burden of paying for childcare disproportionately affects parents of color, who are either forced to leave the workforce, reduce hours, or stay in a low-wage job instead of contributing their talents at higher levels. But childcare support, instead of being seen as an investment, is often positioned as a “handout.”

Regionally, this shows up in the example of how Atlanta outpaced Birmingham’s economic growth and wealth trajectory. Birmingham engaged in a “fanatical defense of racial apartheid” while Atlanta, although no stranger to racism, was more accommodating of integration—marketing itself as the “city too busy to hate.” In 2024, Birmingham’s household income is 43 percent less than it is in Atlanta—at least partially a legacy of racist decisions made between 1950 and 1970 that thwarted its economic progress.

Nationally, this looks like strict immigration policies and fewer visas for skilled workers. Economists point to immigrant worker shortages as a key contributor to rising inflation. Yet our country voted in a president who ran on closing our borders and somehow simultaneously getting rid of inflation. This is magical thinking, but facts no longer matter when xenophobia dominates the narrative.

Zooming out, the ripple effects of these consciously or subconsciously race-based decisions become staggering. And it is simply because those with decision-making capacity carry Whiteness as sacred.

Three Strategies for the Current Moment

The present situation may be dire, but we recognize that our ancestors experienced far worse. Our question for this moment continues to be: What good can we bring to the conscious evolution of humanity as social impact leaders?

Here, we focus on three key strategies:

1. Know our history: Understand the prosperity that people of color have generated for this nation. Not long ago, enslaved Black Americans were forced to produce economic value and barred from participating in the wealth that was created from their labor, while Indigenous people had their land stolen from them and immigrant laborers were heavily exploited. Yet when social change leaders attempt to address that history to create conditions for everyone to participate in America’s economy today equitably, it’s called a handout. When a disproportionate number of people of color fail—to secure that mortgage, to grow that business, to deliver a healthy birth—it somehow becomes their personal responsibility. Reject that framing loudly, proudly, and in coalition with others.

Remember: The US economy could not have become the most powerful in the world without enslaved Black people’s labor and the ruthless exploitation of immigrant laborers. We wouldn’t have railroads connecting our coasts if Chinese immigrants weren’t forced to build them. This entire project of America was built on the forcible White seizure of Indigenous land. People of color made this country it what it is. Live into that knowing every day.

2. Center your healing and joy: Resmaa Menakem provides rich wisdom in My Grandmother’s Hands, writing that “trauma decontextualized in people looks like culture.” We saw a clear example of this trauma on January 6, 2021: the red faces, the costumes, the violence, the noose. That same culture of fear was infused into Donald Trump’s most recent campaign—and it worked. He’s speaking directly to people’s traumatized amygdala—the primal, reptilian section of the brain that is responsible for the “fight or flight” response. Unfortunately, in a traumatized country, fear often wins.People working for social change are hardly immune to fear and, even worse, to becoming “brainwashed” with self-hate. Maybe there’s a both/and strategy: We can lead from a clear sense of our collective realities while building coalitions rooted in love, joy, and healing. Experiencing joy is key to long-term activism. How will you transform your surroundings if you’re constantly slogging through soul-sucking realities?Prioritize your wellbeing. As bell hooks said, “If you’re f’d up, and you lead the revolution, you will have an f’d up revolution.”
3. Double down on racial justice: The conservative ecosystem is a well-funded and long-term orchestrated effort. As our country approaches a majority people of color population by 2044, how might a counterstrategy be built?  The “joy” in the Harris campaign didn’t stick, but we can’t help but wonder what a campaign making identity a point of unification would look like. What would it look like to see a candidate of color say clearly, with their whole chest, “As your president, I will protect the civil rights of all Americans, ensuring that Black, Indigenous, and people of color have the same economic freedoms and opportunities to thrive as White people have for over 250 years.”

Getting to Work

Are progressive social change agents in the halls of philanthropy and nonprofits ready to engage in the struggle ahead? We hope so.

Too often, social change institutions in the United States reflect the country’s racism. Despite making significant progress toward equity since 2020, philanthropy and nonprofits are White-created, mostly White-led, and White-serving institutions.

However, there is an opportunity for the social sector to embrace innovation, deploy rapid-response funding, participate in trust-based giving, increase grantmaking, and continue ceding power and spotlights to community leaders in Black and Indigenous communities and communities of color.

We are now called to remember that transformative change is both a marathon and a relay. We both stand on the shoulders of those who came before us and must move further along the track. The challenges we face—economic inequality, systemic racism, and the persistence of harmful narratives—are daunting but not insurmountable.

Let us choose courage over complacency. Let us invest in the not-so-radical idea that everyone deserves to thrive regardless of race or background. Let us build coalitions that center on love, joy, and justice.

The work ahead requires imagination, tenacity, and an unshakable belief in our ability to write a new narrative in which racial equity is a North Star. The question isn’t whether change is possible; it’s whether we are ready to live in that new narrative.

So, are you ready to get to work?