Perspective is defined as a particular attitude or way of regarding something, a point of view, as it were. My political perspective is a function of my empirical understanding of the Black experience in America, with a particular emphasis on post-Civil War America. Suffice it to say, my perspective of America and America’s creation myth are not aligned. Context is the circumstances that form the setting of an event in a way that it can be fully understood. So this column is about the context of the midterm election from my perspective, not the conventional perspective.
On Nov. 3, America experienced a political tsunami that rearranged power relationships inside the governing political infrastructure at the federal and state levels. Democrats are projected to control 30 of the nation’s 50 governorships, with Democratic trifectas, meaning Democrats control the governor’s office, the House and Senate, projected in 22 states. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, probably described it best. He called it “close to an extinction-level event for Republicans in many parts of the country.”
To provide some context for Nov. 3 requires a visit to the past, specifically July 1863. The Battle of Gettysburg is generally considered to be a turning point of the Civil War. A casual survey of how historians characterize the status and condition of the North and South before Gettysburg would literally describe Democrats and Republicans before Nov. 3.
We know what happened at Gettysburg, but what happened after? After the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia retreated and never attempted to invade the North again. But what happened next was really the game changer: Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman taking command of the Union forces. In March 1864, Lincoln promoted Grant to general-in-chief of the Union armies, and Grant immediately appointed Sherman to command the Military Division of the Mississippi. Working as a strategic team, Grant pressured the Confederate capital in Virginia, while Sherman destroyed the Confederacy’s economic base in the Deep South. Gettysburg was the precipitating event. Grant and Sherman won the war.
This election was clearly a game changer, but it remains to be seen if it was a political paradigm shift. Democrats won a battle, but they didn’t win the war. The enemy has not surrendered. They’re still in the field with every intention of regrouping and launching a November 2028 counterattack. An operating principle that’s always true — what happens next is more important than what happened because, depending on what happens next, what happened might not be important. It’s obvious that Trump and his MAGA cult are in retreat. That’s not the question. The question to be answered is, when the new Congress is sworn in, will Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries morph into Grant and Sherman?
Let’s return to the precipitating event — the election. It goes without saying there were seismic shifts in every demographic. Democrats made positive gains across major demographic groups and categories — race, gender, age, education and education by race. While Democrats didn’t win White voters, their performance improved in the aggregate by 12 points, according to a New York Times analysis. In fact, Republicans got just 51% of the White vote, according to that analysis.
Commentators and political pundits are already opining about how this could represent a change in how White voters view Democrats. Another school of thought is White voters were repudiating Trump and MAGA Republicans, and this represents the end of Trump and the MAGA movement.
I would posit that over the past 20 months, 21st-century Hispanics learned firsthand that, in the eyes of MAGA, no matter how long they’ve been in America, they’re never gonna be White and therefore they can’t be Americans. I would say welcome back to the POC, but you really never left. White Americans not in the corporate, millionaire or billionaire cohort found out that those White folks give less than a damn about them. And that’s probably a hard truth — like there’s no Santa Claus.So how did Tuesday happen?
Interest convergence. Interest convergence is a foundational concept in critical race theory. It holds that the economic, legal or social progress of racial minorities occurs when it aligns with the self-interest of the dominant group, in our case White America. The theory was developed by the late Derrick Bell in his landmark analysis of Brown v. Board of Education. He argued that segregation was not outlawed purely because it was wrong, but because maintaining it was actively harming the United States’ global reputation during the Cold War. The fight for Black education was converted into a tool for American anti-communist foreign policy.
Theories provide a structured, logical system of concepts that explain, predict and make sense of events, behaviors and phenomena. Derrick Bell and critical race theory are doing what Darwin’s theory of evolution and Einstein’s theory of relativity are doing, making the universe explicable.
So now you can sit on the dock of America’s political bay and watch the White political tide roll in, but you’ll watch it roll away again. Trust Derrick Bell on that until somebody proves him wrong.
Mike Jones is a political analyst, columnist and member of the St. Louis American Editorial Board.