If only Joe Biden had thought of White Women Zoom Hour, he might still be at the top of the ticket.
The accounts of “white ladies for Harris,” a star-studded videoconference whose attendance numbered in the six digits last night, sound like a conservative satire of progressive identity politics. “White women, we have 100 days to help save the world,” warned antigun activist Shannon Watts. According to Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown, who tuned into the Zoom call, actress Connie Britton called a vote for Kamala an act of “self-love.” Author Glennan Doyle’s presentation was “premised on the idea that white women want to speak up for Harris but don’t [because] they’re raised to please.”
I don’t know if this tactic will work, but it’s a fascinating window into how non-policy-related identity politics can’t help but affect actual policy.
For example, I have no doubt the Gaza protests will continue, but there is simply no way anyone will pretend that movement threatens Harris’s nominating convention or her electoral chances. Biden was legitimately spooked enough by the pro-Hamas elements in his base that he shifted his rhetoric and his policies—slow-rolling weapons to Israel, putting U.S. personnel offshore Gaza in an attempt to freeze the fighting, sanctioning Israelis in the West Bank in a misguided play for evenhandedness. By the time Biden dropped out of the race, the administration’s message was garbled beyond recognition and the delays in the war forced the hostages to languish in Hamas dungeons.
Biden’s support for Israel over Hamas for most of the war was presented in progressive media as a story about race—an old white man discounting young black voters and their solidarity with “brown” Palestinians. This framing activates white liberals as if they are seeing a Bat-Signal projected into the clouds above Gotham.
Just look at the campus tentifada. Whites are still by far the largest racial group at the Ivies, just as they are among college students overall. Women outnumber men in higher education, so these white women having Zoom hangouts with Connie Britton are a pretty strong target audience.
Especially because this same demographic is likely to have disposable income to donate and the leisure time to campaign that comes along with it. “Have pro-Palestinian protests taken place disproportionately at elite colleges, where few students come from lower-income families?” asked researchers presenting their findings in Washington Monthly. “The answer is a resounding yes.”
The authors matched protest and encampment data with nationwide Pell grant numbers (i.e., government scholarships for lower-income students), and the conclusion was crystal clear: “Pro-Palestinian protests have been rare at colleges with high percentages of Pell students. Encampments at such colleges have been rarer still… in the vast majority of cases, campuses that educate students mostly from working-class backgrounds have not had any protest activity.”
In May, the New York Times looked into why antiwar sentiment at black colleges didn’t turn into pro-Hamas encampments. “The reasons stem from political, cultural and socioeconomic differences with other institutions of higher learning,” the reporters wrote. “While H.B.C.U.s host a range of political views, domestic concerns tend to outweigh foreign policy in the minds of most students. Many started lower on the economic ladder and are more intently focused on their education and their job prospects after graduation.”
There is also a sense of self-awareness at these colleges that is sorely lacking at a ridiculous elite circus like Columbia. “Whether people support the decision or not,” Morehouse President David Thomas said of the school hosting a speech by Biden, “they are committed to having it happen on our campus in a way that doesn’t undermine the integrity or dignity of the school.”
One gets the sense that, just as dignity is not a word readily associated with the behavior of students and faculty at Columbia or the University of Pennsylvania, dignity is also unlikely to be a factor in the considerations of a hundred thousand white women for Harris—the latter are heavily invested in self-actualization, not self-awareness.
So are these white wonder women going to turn their self-love army into anti-Kamala riots in Chicago? Unlikely. Will they interrupt Harris’s speeches to accuse her of not caring about “brown people”? I don’t think they will. Legions of white women who think saving the world requires a vote for Kamala Harris aren’t going to protest Kamala Harris as an avatar of white supremacy and colonialism.
The Washington Post’s Karen Attiah, one of the more prominent voices to amplify celebrations of Hamas’s slaughter on October 7, wants Harris to believe the threat is there. “If Harris does not get Gaza and protests right, especially as colleges start the fall semester — the campaign will be in *SERIOUS* trouble with young + PoC voters,” she posted. Attiah added: “Do people not understand that these groups could just as easily organize massive ‘Young People for Uncommitted’ Zooms just as quickly as people mobilized for Harris?”
No, they can’t. And they won’t. Harris’s speech yesterday suggests she, unfortunately, won’t seek to take much advantage of the neutralizing of this factional revolt when it comes to the war in Gaza. Harris seems dedicated to presenting the conflict as a false equivalence between Israel and Hamas. But her strong statement against the pro-Hamas protesters and rioters on Wednesday was a sign that she understands that the insulation from protests that Biden had pales in comparison to what Harris has in her pocket.
