In reading articles leading up to the Women’s March on Washington, I kept coming across that word “intersectionality”. This seems to be a new buzz word, if I am understanding it properly, to describe overlapping connections of race, class, and gender, and it occurred to me I have some unique intersectionality of my own, which often, and especially of late, has left me feeling like a stranger among my own friends, family, and co-workers.
As a girl growing up in rural South Georgia, I have always felt like that square peg in a round hole person, and there are multiple factors that have contributed to that over my life, which I won’t bore you to tears with, unless you ask me. I’ll be glad to tell you anything your heart desires to know about the South or Southerners, or Rednecks, or Crackers, or Straight-up Trash. You see, I like to consider myself sort of a Dixie Anthropologist. I’ve spent my life among them. I know their ways.
But I will also tell you the answer probably isn’t as simple as you think.
I don’t want this to just be another election rant, goodness knows we have all been subjected to enough of those! However, I want to say that I spent MONTHS begging people PLEASE do not vote for Donald Trump! He does not care about you, he cannot relate, in any kind of a real way, to the actual day-to-day struggles you are going through! He’s no different than the old-time Dixiecrats like Eugene Talmadge who promised “I am a friend of the working man! I gonna help you!” All the while smiling in people’s faces, telling them everything they want to hear while caring about nothing more than keeping he and his cronies in power. It was old-fashioned divide & conquer politics. Their biggest fear was that poor white sharecroppers and poor black sharecroppers might actually start talking to each other and realize how much they had in common and unite against a power structure that was keeping them both locked in a cycle of poverty. To me, DT is cut from that same cloth. He’s divisive, just like Talmadge. He will do far more harm than good in the long run, just like Talmadge. Talmadge actually fought FDR (who had a deep love for Georgia) when it came to New Deal policies in Georgia that would raise the standard of living for the poor. Talmadge’s philosophy on voters was simple. Cut the black people out of the political process, and keep everyone just as poor, and dumb, and sick as possible, keep them hating each other…and they’ll keep voting for me and believing my lies.
How is Trump any different? He seems to have the same play book.
I have talked until I am blue in the face. And still, rural white people fell for a vulgar Carnival Barker. I am embarrassed. I am scared. I am heartsick.
And, while it is true that there are indeed people in rural Georgia who are just dumber than a wet brick, it’s not that people around here are ALL necessarily ignorant or ill-informed. They read, they watch news from a variety of sources, but it just seems we aren’t hearing the same things. Trump’s Inaugural speech did not translate the same between urban and rural populations. It’s as if 2 completely different speeches were heard.
And speaking of the Inauguration, I am giddy, positively THRILLED DT’s ceremony was abysmal and downright tacky! And Melania is a vapid, walking coat hanger. BUT…here’s one of those areas of intersectionality:
I was at my sister’s house yesterday, and I got into good discussion with my brother-in-law (they both voted Trump, he’s an engineer, she’s a Registered Dietician), about the comparisons of the crowds and attendance between 2009 and 2017 Inaugurals. We both agreed, the media and people on Facebook who are pointing and laughing are kinda missing the point on exactly why this happened. We both agreed, the reasons for lower attendance in 2017 were likely:
- It’s an apples to oranges comparison. 2 completely different dynamics happening.
- Many people who voted Trump couldn’t afford to go. Who has money for plane tickets and a DC hotel when you are worrying about buying groceries?
- And speaking of Washington, DC, for people who live in rural areas and small towns, DC might as well be a foreign country. In addition to lacking resources for the trip, there’s the added barriers of not knowing how to negotiate airports, public transit, and the like. All these things are familiar to urbanites, but not to people who don’t travel much beyond a day car trip.
- There’s also they knowledge that there were going to be mass protests and that city people don’t like you. People were afraid of bodily harm and too many unknown factors.
All these things added up, IMO, to keep alot of Trump’s flag-wavers and cheerleaders at home and watching it on TV.
One argument I saw in the back and forth arguments online between Trump supporters and Anti-trump folks online, was a supporter would say, “Trump’s people have jobs! They had to work!” and the argument coming back would be “I thought you people said you didn’t have jobs, so which is it?” Well, my answer to that is, where I usually find myself, in the middle. Many people who supported Trump are underemployed in a job with low pay, which means they have to work every hour they can, to make every dollar they can. But I digress…
Where Brother-in-law and I lost our common intersectionality on this discussion, was when Spicer came out with that mortifying statement about how the press misrepresented the crowds. BIL thought it was something that needed to be said. He was all, “Good for him!” I looked at my Brother-in-law, and I swannie to God, I thought I was going to have a dyin’ duck fit right there! Really? Can you not SEE that this is prime example of how Trump does NOT understand the people that voted for him? Nor does he appear to care about you! Trump’s little mouthpiece Spicer could have given any one of the reasons we named above to explain the low attendance, but NOOOOOO, he’s going with the ol’ “Are you gonna believe your eyes or what I tell you?” tactic. This shows all they care about is saving their own face, making themselves look good, and to Hades with any reasonable explanation that might generate a little empathy. I told BIL that if he thinks Trump is going to do anything to try and bring people together with divisive comments like this, well, then, he’s about as sharp as a marble. And these are educated people with advanced degrees! Gives me a migraine, I am telling you!
This is what happens when people vote angry and with their middle finger.
It doesn’t mean that their grievances aren’t legitimate, but they have chosen an instrument which is altogether wrong.
I am a person who has always known myself and my own mind, and even I don’t know what to think about all this sometimes. The divides are getting deeper and deeper, and it gets harder and harder to straddle them. The optimist in me hopes that we can work to find common grounds with each other, and still be friends and neighbors and just agree to disagree in some areas. But we have to keep talking to, and not at, each other. That’s what I can do, and that’s why I needed to get these thoughts out of my head and into the world somewhere.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and ask me anything. I do have quite a few stories.
Here’s a parting entertaining tidbit from the inside. Quote from my mother, on Nov 9: “This is the best thing to happen to this country since Eisenhower!”
Help.
A lot of that knowledge has served me well through the years! And I am telling you…there was nothing, NOTHING like being in the 7th grade in 1977 in an 85% black school and Roots has been airing on TV every night. Lordy.