Winsome Sears, newly elected vice governor of Virginia, is a black Republican woman – and the first African American woman to hold high political office in the state. It was only a few hours since she had won the election when Sears had an argument on Twitter with another black woman, politics and sports commentator Jemele Hill. Hill had written that the election of Republican Glenn Youngkin in Virginia showed that Americans simply “loved” the system of “white supremacy”.
“We dare to contradict,” was the answer from Sears’ account, which showed a photo of the election winner with a rifle in hand. “I tell you, what you see here is the American dream,” Sears had said to her followers that night. The 57-year-old politician is right-wing conservative, fights against abortion and has repeatedly affirmed that it is not gun laws, but individual gun possession that prevents crime. The fact that Sears was elected and that the Latino Jason Miyares will be attorney general in the future is evidence for the Republicans that the Democrats are lying if they justify the election result with ongoing racism.
Many Democrats, on the other hand, are unimpressed, although thirteen percent black and 32 percent Latinos voted for Youngkin. After all, it is not new that conservatives are ready to welcome minority representatives if they agree ideologically with them. On the day after the election, many accuse the Republicans of having won with racist “dog whistles”, that is, barely veiled appeals to the racism of their supporters.
White women with no degrees chose Youngkin
There is deep shock that the Democrats suffered particularly catastrophic losses in one group: among white women, who voted 57 percent for Youngkin after choosing Joe Biden over Donald Trump in 2020, if only by one percentage point. The increase for Republicans was particularly dramatic among white women without college degrees, 75 percent of whom voted for Youngkin after having voted Trump into the White House with 56 percent.
The Democrats, who cannot push through crucial parts of their agenda in Congress, but won many voters with promises such as expanding childcare, are nervous. Columnist Wajahat Ali even headed his comment in “The Daily Beast” magazine: “You damned Karens are killing America”. “Karen” is a dirty word for racist white women who, for example, call the police for trivial reasons.
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