Black Women Saved Our Empire

Let’s think about this for a moment. There is a lot of talk on social media about how Black women voters basically saved America from the very worst of itself. They came out not only in strong numbers, but consistently voted against GOP candidates at the highest rates (between 80 and 90 percent). Now let’s zero in on the results of Texas’s gubernatorial race, which had hardcore MAGA incumbent Greg Abbott facing Gina Hinojosa, a four-term state rep of Texas’ 49th legislative district, which includes Austin. Hinojosa, a Mexican American, defeated Abbott by little over 7 points (Abbot: 45.7 percent; Hinojosa: 52.8 percent). She was the clear winner of this contest.

In 2022, however, Abbott defeated Dem superstar Beto O’Rourke by 10 points. What changed between then and now? And one must keep in mind that Hinojosa, a state rep, was pretty obscure when she tossed her name into the race compared to O’Rourke, a US rep. In the words of the Texas Tribune: “People weren’t exactly knocking down Gina Hinojosa’s door to get her to run for governor last year.” But in the months leading to the general election, she became “Abbott’s most viable Democratic challenger yet.” What happened between 2022 and 2026? A surge in Latino voters, and a considerable increase in their support of Democratic candidates. And this surge had a lot to do with Trump’s secret police, ICE.

Maria Teresa Kumar on PBS News said,“Latinos are not a monolith until you come for our families. And that’s basically what we saw last night [in Texas]. It was a repudiation of the ICE raids that have been happening. I can tell you that I can go around the country and there’s not a Latino, whether they work in Wall Street or they work in the fields, that don’t know someone that’s been caught in the dragnet.”

True, ICE and the utterly racist “Kavanaugh stop” provided considerable force to the electoral shift that played a leading part in Hinojosa’s victory and the spectacular transformation of Texas into a blue state; nevertheless Hinojosa got only 59 percent of the votes cast by Latino men, who were 7 percent of all voters in this race. Latino women, who were 13 percent of all votes, did much better at the polls—70 percent voted for Hinojosa. But nine out every 10 Black women voted for the Mexican American candidate; and because this block represented 7 percent of all voters, they were central in turning Texas blue. (As for white voters, you guessed it, they stuck with the America-destroying party, MAGA—61 percent of men; 57 percent of women.)

To be honest, I do not have a good answer for this question: Why were Latino votes not equal to or higher than the Black ones? I can, however, provide the sketch of an answer to this question: Why did Black American women essentially save the American empire? And, yes, you must frame the 2026 general election in those big terms. Trump, by controlling both houses, and the Supreme Court, was burning the US down to the ground. It was not just with his erratic tariffs, which pissed off even our nation’s closest trading partner, Canada, but also Europe and Mexico and the rest of the world. Then there was the unnecessary war with Iran, the decimation of our empire’s military bases in the Middle East, the nonsense about Greenland becoming a US territory, the support of Putin, the weakening of the US dollar, and the non-stop corruption.

Even just days leading to the general election, it was reported that ICE paid an astonishing $495 million for a decaying and vacant prison site in Appleton, Minnesota that only asked for $75 million from the state last year. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is now demanding Congress investigate this deal, which involves the transfer of “almost half a billion [tax dollars] to a Trump donor for a prison worth just $75 million.” The prison’s county assessed the market value of the property to be “$14.75 million in 2026.” The US was not in decline under Trump. It was falling out of the sky.

So, why didn’t Black women (and also Black men, whose voting rates were never far behind those of Black women) just say fuck it. This country hates us. Red MAGA caps are the new white hoods. And when Trump and his supporters attack DEI, they are really just attacking the small gains Black and brown people have made in this unrepentantly racist system. Why not let the whole bad business just burn to a crisp? But this is not what happened. Instead, Black women went to the polls and saved what remained of the American empire.

One reason for this curious fact is obviously found in the Black American tradition of resistance—the long and deep struggle against the racism and voter suppression that structures the Black experience to this day. This tradition places high value on the right to vote and the maintenance and expansion of our democracy. The other reason is plainly economic: If a US president decides to burn the whole country for whatever reason, then the first people to be thrown into the fire will be Black women. And so it is. Three months after Trump entered the White House, 300,000 Black women lost their jobs. By March, it was reported that 600,000 were now out of work. So, saving the US is very much about saving Black women and men and their families from economic catastrophe.

In terms of income, Black American women have lost the most during Trump’s second time in office. And so they have no illusions about the kind of monster they’re dealing with. MAGA, on the other hand, is so devoted to whiteness that its members are willing to maintain its ghostly power at the cost of all else: the material quality of life, the strength of the economy, the whole damn empire itself.