As she browsed TikTok in the wake of Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat by President-elect Donald J. Trump, Camille McCallum, a 30-year-old from Dallas, noticed her feed was full of videos of Black women in “visceral pain.”
She also noticed some Black women drawing attention to exit poll data from outlets like NBC News, which estimated that more than 90 percent of Black women voted for Ms. Harris. The same data showed support among white women at 45 percent.
When she saw a video from a TikTok user asking if anyone was making shirts to honor Black female voters, Ms. McCallum, the founder of Black Woman on a Mission, a digital community and an apparel brand, got to work. She is now selling T-shirts for members of the “92% Club.” Her company has since received thousands of orders, she said.
“This was kind of the antithesis of the blue bracelet,” she said, referring to bracelets some white women are wearing to signify that they did not vote for Mr. Trump. “Black women were largely on the same page during a time where, you know, that was not the case for much of the country.”
Americans have long expressed their political views through symbolic adornments. Often, voters are especially eager to reach for them right after an election — either to celebrate the results or to make clear that they did not support the winner. (That particular impulse goes back at least as far as the “Don’t Blame Me — I’m From Massachusetts” bumper stickers that followed George McGovern’s defeat by President Richard M. Nixon.)
After Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016, some on the left wore safety pins as a sign of support for marginalized groups, while others opted for the less subtle, pink catlike hats that were a nod to a leaked “Access Hollywood” tape of Mr. Trump talking crudely about grabbing women by their genitals.
And many of Mr. Trump’s supporters have long reached for his bright red Make America Great Again hats, whether he has won or lost. This time, though, after Mr. Trump won the popular vote and made gains even in bluer parts of the country, some are wearing it with more confidence.
“I was hesitant to put it on for a couple of days,” said Ashley Mesa, a legal assistant who lives in Fort Myers, Fla. She said she bought her MAGA hat just before the election in Wisconsin, where she had been working as a paid canvasser for Mr. Trump’s campaign. It was the first piece of political merchandise she had ever purchased.
“But then it’s like, if you believe in something, you should be proud of it,” Ms. Mesa, 23, said.
On the left, there appears to be more debate about political symbols.
The blue bracelets to which Ms. McCallum alluded began to gain a foothold among white women after Libby Louwagie, a 37-year-old mother of three who lives in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, posted a short video that she had filmed in her car after dropping off her children at school.
“Fellow white women, how are we signaling to each other now which side we are on?” she said in the clip, suggesting blue friendship bracelets as a potential marker of a woman’s political ideology.
She didn’t think anyone would see the post. “Most of my videos get 700 views,” Ms. Louwagie said in a phone interview. But that video, which is no longer public, was viewed more than four million times and quickly became divisive online: Were the bracelets an act of resistance or a hollow symbol?
“When I put a bracelet on, I hope it’s a signal to other white women that we need to come together and do work together,” Ms. Louwagie said. A fan of Taylor Swift, whose devotees are known for trading friendship bracelets at her concerts, Ms. Louwagie said the accessory was the first thing that came to her mind that day in the car.
Some say the blue bracelets have been a welcome symbol in a tense climate. Belle Wagner, who is 33 and lives in Pen Argyl, Pa., said her bracelet had already attracted some attention.
“My whole county was very, very, very much red and I was actually nervous at first,” Ms. Wagner, a project manager, said. “It’s not really a safe space to be a proud Kamala supporter.”
The Washington Post reported that in New York City, a Democrat stronghold where Mr. Trump made inroads this election cycle, there was an influx of red baseball caps as some Trump supporters wanted to signal a different kind of solidarity.
Ms. Mesa, the legal assistant from Florida, said she had seen an increase in people wearing Trump-related merchandise on social media since the election. Online, some users have begun selling shirts and sweatshirts that say “Trump Won, Get Over It” and hats emblazoned with “45-47,” referring to Mr. Trump’s position as both the 45th and 47th president of the United States. (Mr. Trump’s campaign sells — and is currently sold out of — a version of this hat, which Mr. Trump sported during the election.)
On the left, some have questioned the potential of such political symbols to yield meaningful action.
Ishioma Odinjor, a 24-year-old public health professional and beauty influencer who lives in Atlanta, compared the blue bracelets to the black square Instagram posts that some people shared in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd.
“It was mostly white women who were talking about these bracelets,” she said. “Me and other Black people and other Black creators are kind of just looking at them going, ‘You don’t even know half the work that we’ve done to try to get here and you thought friendship bracelets were a good idea?’”
In a TikTok video about the bracelets, Jordan Williams said that “having visual representations of where you stand isn’t a bad thing inherently,” but she urged white viewers to work on their communities.
In an interview, Ms. Williams, who teaches English at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, said she had also noticed shirts like the 92% Club ones on her For You page on TikTok. The shirts, she said, seemed to have an air of both sadness and indignation.
“We saw all those ads about how your vote is private and your vote is your own business — this is a response that says, ‘I feel comfortable showing my business, and I voted this way,’” Ms. Williams, 26, said.
“While I’m not just running out to get a T-shirt or blue bracelet,” she added, “I do understand the impulse behind it.”
The post Which Candidate Did They Vote For? Read Their Shirts. appeared first on New York Times.
