With the Presidential Election coming up on Nov. 5, I wanted to address the topic of voting. I’m sure you’ve heard people say, “This is the most important election of our lives,” and “vote because your ancestors died for it.”
If that sounds familiar, it’s because this has been said almost every Presidential Election cycle, especially for Black people. In my opinion, this is a form of voter shaming, and it doesn’t work. While I agree that voting is important, and I acknowledge what our ancestors sacrificed for this, I’m not a fan of using this narrative to push people to vote. In the past, I’ve utilized similar tactics, but after study and self-reflection, I began to see how it’s connected to transactional voter engagement and White supremacy, particularly in its emphasis on quantity over quality and urgency.
For instance, over time, I’ve seen voter engagement become “whitewashed.” This shows up with commercialized messaging, such as using a Black fist on flyers, groups that pop up only during election time, having celebrities push voting, and an excess of texts and calls. Additionally, voter engagement has focused more on quantity over quality, which is often rushed and responds to an urgent need to engage people. This causes movement burnout and creates a more transactional experience. Effective community engagement is not rushed and should occur throughout the year, not just during election season.
Another theme tied to this is maintaining White comfort by avoiding discussions about the various issues Black people face. There is a massive amount of money given towards voter engagement. However, other key issues that affect Black people receive low funding or attention, especially during election season. As someone who runs a Black-led nonprofit, I find myself constantly screaming that we face other pressing problems such as police violence, the murders of Black trans women, housing issues, and climate/environmental justice. These issues are often pushed to the side during election season. If we lean too much into this, we simply become pushers of a party’s agenda or puppets for them without even knowing it at times. Another principle of White supremacy that ties into this is the inclination towards either/or thinking.
More specifically, the belief that you can only support a candidate from one of the major parties. This mentality restricts access to other philosophies and ideas. Other candidates are running in November: Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Melina Abdullah as independent candidates, Dr. Jill Stein and Butch Ware with the Green Party, and Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. These are names you’ve likely not heard much about because they’re consistently left out of debates and intentionally kept out of the spotlight. Despite this, their campaigns amplify messages crucial to the conversation and deserve to be heard.
As I have previously mentioned, I’m not advising anyone to avoid voting or to support 45. I’m a former elected official who once won an election by just three votes, so I understand the importance of voting, especially in local elections. However, our ancestors want more for us than just voting. They want us to have a holistic approach to organizing—educating ourselves and others beyond voting, collectively organizing, resting when needed, and being about the business of our people in all spaces; truly representing and embodying what it means to live out our ancestors’ wildest dreams.
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