Pulitzer Prize Winner Nikole Hannah-Jones: 'This Election Is About Whether Democracy Can Prevail'
Presidential elections in the United States are always stressful, yet this one feels more consequential than any other in my lifetime. The prospect of seeing the first Black woman president is historic, but right now I'm much more concerned about whether democracy will prevail at the end of the day. Wherever I travel, there’s an overwhelming worry about whether we might elect someone who has been called a fascist by their own former generals. The atmosphere is tense, but there’s definitely hope.
After Kamala Harris became the nominee following President Biden’s decision to step down, people were invigorated because there was so much apathy surrounding him as a candidate. But although there’s hope, there’s a palpable fear that even if Vice President Harris wins, the victory might be contested, and the fight may continue. This election is viewed as a chance to restore America’s course, particularly around democratic values, but feelings are mixed—hope tempered with anxiety.
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There’s a lot of uncertainty. We’re seeing reports that MAGA activists are already preparing to challenge the results if Kamala wins. We've seen instances of burned ballot boxes and confrontations at polling stations. My colleague Jim Rutenberg wrote a piece in the New York Times last week about MAGA officials on the election boards who may refuse to certify the results if Trump doesn’t win.
This election alone won’t resolve America’s issues, and no matter what happens, there are still eighty million people who are willing to vote for a candidate many people believe wants to be an autocratic. There's a sense that this is just the beginning of a fight about what type of country we are.
So much is at stake for women, particularly women of colour. I’m very concerned that we have lost a 50-year constitutional right [to abortion, under Trump’s first administration] and that is already costing lives. Millions of women now live in states where they don't have access to abortion care and women are dying because of it. When Trump was running in 2016 it was theoretical, but it's no longer theoretical. I was born into a country where women had this right, and now for the first time in my life, I live in a country where we don't. It’s clearly one of the most important issues for American women, and disproportionately Black women and Latina women are going to be hurt.
A recent study shows we're already seeing a rise in infant mortality since Roe v Wade was overturned, that lack of access to health care is causing more children to die during childbirth. Black women in the United States have the highest infant mortality rates in the industrialised world. So these issues are concerning. Kamala Harris alone can't do a lot, right? She is also going to have to keep the Senate, and hopefully gain the House of Representatives, because what's needed is a national law that Congress can pass codifying the right to abortion care.
We have also had affirmative action overturned by the Trump court, and so I'm also living for the first time in my life in a country where there are attacks on diversity programs. We're seeing some declines in enrolment of Black students at elite colleges, where all sorts of different programs that were designed to try to help Black Americans access opportunity and equality are now being attacked.
We’re seeing the most devastating impacts of climate change here in the United States. And this election is about one candidate who is a climate change denier, who does not believe in the science — and another candidate who does believe in science and has been part of an administration that has tried to grapple with climate change. So to me, those are the three most important issues.
Working on The 1619 Project, which I’ve been engaged with for about five years, has reinforced my belief that America’s fundamental inability to grapple with the history of race and racism in this society has led us to the type of polarisation that we're experiencing now. A deeply unequal, divided society has been borne out by the national politics. Studies have shown that white women vote their race over their gender; the majority of white women in the United States voted for Trump, while the majority of women overall voted for Hillary Clinton. The project argues that we really have to grapple with the way that race has been created, to divide us, to force us to work against our own best interests nationally, and that allowed a figure like Donald Trump, who is openly at this point, running on a white national campaign that's stoking racial divide.
Asking white Americans to confront the legacy of slavery and racism is both easier and harder than when The 1619 Project first launched. That backlash since 2019 — in which people are not just attacking the 1619 Project but using the power of the state to legislate against teaching anything that would allow us to learn the history — has been highly effective, and, I would argue, very dangerous.
On the other hand, I am on the road every single week and I know that there are vast amounts of white Americans in my audience everywhere I go who are wanting to grapple with this history, who are angered that they never learned this history before, and are really willing to do that work. There is a lot of hope out there.
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