The Long Arm of Colonialism: White Republican Female Voters

• In Event: The Pull of Tradition: When Women Challenge, or Resist, Change

Abstract

In 1899, Rudyard Kipling sent his famous poem “The White Man’s Burden” to Theodore Roosevelt just as the U.S. extended its colonial empire into the Philippines. Kipling’s notion of empire extended beyond military conquest to include the domination of society wherein “the white man’s burden” became the task of civilizing the “new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child” (1899) through the inculcation of white Christian morals and norms. Yet as Ware (Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism, and History, 2015) asks, could “Kipling’s White Man…exist without White Woman somewhere at this side? We are entitled to ask what her burden was…” (37). This paper about contemporary politics is motivated by the broad question of the role of white women as civilizers in North America, and in particular the idea of white women and nation. We analyze the relevance of the long arm of colonialism in the United States to the contemporary practices of white female voters.
In contrast to women of color, white women voters in the U.S. have consistently supported Republican Party candidates for President. Indeed, and since the time political scientists have collected systematic polling data on U.S. electoral behavior, white women have voted for the Democratic Party candidate only 2 times in all of the presidential elections since 1952. Voting behavior among white women in 2016 proved no exception, and this group of voters supported Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by a margin of 52% to 43%. The reasons for this behavior, we argue, are deeply embedded in the construction of white womanhood in the United States as protectors of civilization and progenitors of racial position. This longstanding trope is embraced unevenly among white female voters, and furthermore, the imperative of white womanhood under this construction need not be explicit. Instead, our analysis of the history and development of white womanhood reveals implicit as well as explicit frames that reinforce ideology, as well as mobilization to support Republican Party candidates.

Authors

• Linda Alvarez, California State University, Northridge

• Jane Y. Junn, University of Southern California