I first heard about this paper from a clip on The Karen Hunter Show on SiriusXM, Why Did Women Vote for Donald Trump? The clip wasn’t the authors themselves, Mark Setzler and Alixandra Yanus of High Point University. It was a breakdown. An interpretation. A man explaining what he believed the study really meant.
I ran it back a few times to make sure I heard him right.
His framing was simple: Why Conservative Women Vote Against Their Own Interests.
He zeroed in on white women without a college degree. Said there were 47 million of them and that more than 60% voted for Trump. The numbers matter—but it was the reasoning that stuck.
Two points.
First, he said many of these women believe people of color don’t deserve what they have. That inequality isn’t systemic, it’s personal. If you don’t have it, you didn’t earn it. Lazy.
Second, he said they are not inspired by successful women. They’re threatened by them. Success doesn’t feel like possibility—it feels like loss. Like somebody else got something that was supposed to be theirs.
So they don’t vote for healthcare.
They don’t vote for wages.
They don’t vote for education.
They vote for the world to stay exactly as it is—even if that world isn’t working for them.
And for many, their vote is tied to the status of their husband. His position becomes the reference point. His standing becomes the ceiling.
I sat with that and said to myself… yeah.
That tracks.
I can see them. The rallies. The outfits. The head-to-toe MAGA uniforms like it’s less about politics and more about belonging—white women at those rallies decked out in so much Trump/MAGA gear they look like a loyalist table at a flea market. The same people screaming about the Constitution who couldn’t tell you how it opens. The ones who hate Obamacare but love their Affordable Care Act coverage. The ones blaming immigrants for factories that were shut down by machines years ago.
So I went and read the paper.
And of course, it doesn’t say any of that.
Academic language never does. It smooths everything out. Turns hard edges into soft phrases. It talks about “racial resentment” and “ambivalent sexism.” It asks questions like:
“Irish, Italians, and Jews overcame prejudice… Blacks should do the same without special favors.”
And right there, it tells you everything about the lens.
Irish. Italians. Jews.
Groups that were once on the outside of whiteness—but over time were allowed to move inside it. They could blend, assimilate, become part of the default.
And let’s not pretend that door opened out of kindness. It opened when whiteness decided it needed to expand—politically, economically, socially.
Black doesn’t have that option.
We can’t hide inside whiteness, sorry Tim and Byron. And most of us wouldn’t want to.
That question doesn’t compare struggle—it erases the outcome.
It pretends the starting line was and the finish line kept moving for all non-whites.
So no—the paper doesn’t say what the clip said.
But the clip said what people recognize.
Let’s stop playing.
Women hate on women.
Not always. Not all. But enough that you recognize it when it shows up.
It doesn’t come out as hate. It comes out sideways.
“She thinks she’s better than everybody.”
“I wonder how she got that.”
“Must be nice.”
Or the one that always carries just enough edge to let you know what it really means:
“I’m happy for her… but…”
That’s not policy. That’s instinct.
And when a woman is successful, that instinct gets louder.
Because success forces comparison. Comparison forces reflection. And reflection is uncomfortable when you don’t like what you see.
So instead of inspiration, it turns into resistance.
That’s the part people won’t say out loud.
For some of these women, seeing another woman rise doesn’t feel like possibility.
They look in the mirror and can only see where they are at not where they could go.
And if they don’t like where they are in life, they’re not going to admit that.
They’re going to reject the reflection.
So they question her.
They diminish her.
They explain her success away.
She didn’t earn it.
She got help.
She had an advantage.
Anything but the truth staring back at them.
And if that’s how you process the world, then of course you don’t vote for change.
You don’t vote for policies that might shift the balance.
You don’t vote for a system that might elevate someone else.
You vote to keep everything exactly as it is.
Because even if the system isn’t working for you…
it’s still working enough to tell you who you’re above.
That B.
Yeah.
And don’t let her be Black.
