Following the 2024 Election, media coverage has been dominated by newspapers seeking to articulate how Donald Trump won the election.¹ As a part of this coverage, there is a noticeable rise in articles on the shift in Black and Latino votes for Trump with titles such as “Trump’s return to power fueled by Hispanic, working-class voter support,” and lines like “[s]ome surprising margins . . . within groups including women, Black and Latino voters helped carry the former president to victory.”² While it is certainly important to recognize shifts in the voting patterns of people of color and what that means, the media framing that seeks to attribute Trump’s victory to people of color is concerning because it seemingly blames those who will be most devastated by a second Trump term for his victory.

To be clear, Trump’s voting coalition is overwhelmingly composed of white voters. Approximately 84% of the votes for Trump in 2024 were cast by white voters.³ While it is true that some voters of color shifted towards Donald Trump, Kamala Harris still received the majority of votes cast by people of color, and received 83% of the votes cast by Black voters.⁴ Articles seeking to understand how people of color may have “fueled” Trump’s victory miss the forest for the trees. Current articles mirror phenomena in victim-blaming discourse where “there is a lack of tendency to blame the environment” and instead a “tend[ency] to blame specific victims.”⁵

Donald Trump won the 2024 election despite running the most racist presidential campaign in history, despite his long history of racial slurs and comments (such as claiming that Kamala Harris “turn[ed] Black”), and despite hosting rallies where speakers regularly gave remarks containing racist dog whistles on stage.⁶ This phenomenon, where voters voted for Trump despite his racist actions, suggests that in spite of arguments to the contrary, the United States of America is still wrestling with issues of white supremacy and racial bias.

Now all of this is not to say that Democrats don’t have serious work to do to address concerns held by voters of color. Efforts by the media to understand the shift in the electorate have revealed frustration and fatigue among voters of color, with one such voter saying “what’s the point? I’m just kind of over it all.”⁷ It is clear that the Democratic Party needs to do more than simply taking voters of color, especially Black voters, for granted.⁸ However, recognizing that Democrats must do more for people of color and acknowledging signs of racial battle fatigue are not the same as suggesting that voters of color are responsible for the results of the 2024 election or that Donald Trump has “transformed his party’s base into a new, powerful multiracial coalition.”⁹ The media must take steps to avoid implicitly placing blame for Donald Trump at the feet of voters of color. We deserve better.

1 See, e.g., Brit McCandless Farmer, The Factors That Led to Donald Trump’s Victory, CBS NEWS (Nov. 10, 2024, 11:56 PM), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/factors-that-led-to-donald-trump-victory-60-minutes/.
2 Jason Lange, Bo Erickson & Brad Heath, Trump’s Return to Power Fueled by Hispanic, Working-Class Voter Support, REUTERS (Nov. 7, 2024, 4:51 AM), https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-return-power-fueled-by-hispanic-working-class-voter-support-2024-11-06/; Steven Ross Johnson & Elliott Davis Jr., How Key Demographic Groups Voted in the 2024 Election, U.S. NEWS (Nov. 6, 2024, 5:17 PM), https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2024-11-06/how-5-key-demographic-groups-helped-trump-win-the-2024-election; see also, e.g., Joey Garrison & Rebecca Morin, Shifting Loyalties of These Voters Helped Power Donald Trump to Election Win, USA TODAY (Nov. 6, 2024, 5:39 AM), https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/11/06/black-latino-voters-boost-donald-trump-election-victory/76084362007/; US Election 2024 Results: How Black Voters Shifted Towards Trump, AL JAZEERA (Nov. 6, 2024), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/6/us-election-2024-results-how-black-voters-shifted-towards-trump.
3 Linley Sanders, How 5 Key Demographic Groups Voted in 2024: AP VoteCast, AP NEWS (Nov. 7, 2024, 12:45 PM), https://apnews.com/article/election-harris-trump-women-latinos-black-voters-0f3fbda3362f3dcfe41aa6b858f22d12.
4 Id.
5 Mia Moody-Ramirez & Hazel Cole, Victim Blaming in Twitter Users’ Framing of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, 49(4) J. BLACK STUD. 383, 390 (2018) (discussing victim-blaming literature as analyzed with crime, poverty, disaster, and sexual-assault victims).
6 See, e.g., Nathalie Baptiste, Trump Just Ran the Most Racist Campaign in Modern History – And Won, HUFFINGTON POST (Nov. 6, 2024, 5:50 AM), https://www.huffpost.com/entry/most-racist-campaign-trump-wins_n_672832bce4b0f3d946e000d1.
7 Troy Closson, Clyde McGrady & Rick Rojas, Some Black Voters Ask, What Have Democrats Done for Us?, NEW YORK TIMES (Nov. 12, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12/us/politics/black-voters-democrats-results.html.
8 See, e.g., Brakkton Booker, How Trump Won One-Fifth of Black Men and Nearly Half of Latino Men, POLITICO (Nov. 7, 2024, 11:36 AM), https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/07/trump-black-latino-men-working-class-00188185.
9 William H. Frey, Trump Gained Some Minority Voters, but the GOP Is Hardly a Multiracial Coalition, BROOKINGS (Nov. 12, 2024), https://www.brookings.edu/articles/trump-gained-some-minority-voters-but-the-gop-is-hardly-a-multiracial-coalition/ (describing efforts by media to suggest that Donald Trump has created a “multiracial coalition”). Racial battle fatigue is a term “used to describe three major stress responses—physiological, psychological and behavioral—and involves the energy expended on coping with and fighting racism that is exacted on racially marginalized and stigmatized groups.” JENNIFER L. MARTIN, RACIAL BATTLE FATIGUE: INSIGHTS FROM THE FRONT LINES OF SOCIAL JUSTICE ADVOCACY at xv (Jennifer L. Martin, ed., 2015); see also, e.g., Mary-Frances Winters, Black Fatigue: Racism, Organizations, and the Role of Future Leadership, 98 LEADER TO LEADER 7, 8-9 (Fall 2020).