Like many other Black Americans, I have a complex relationship with the institution of voting. As a young, Black voter, I’ve had a few hard pills to swallow when I learned from older community members that have seen the political climate for decades. Institutions of white supremacy are here to stay and there is no voting it away. Despite our sobering reality, many of us still march to the polls to cast our votes.
The history of Black voting in the US is brutal and bloody. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 made it illegal to use discriminatory practices against voters, which was common in the south. Yet, Black Americans continued to be harassed, beaten, and murdered for exercising their rights to vote. Our grandparents and great-grandparents fought for their rights as American citizens, but racism is strong in this country.
To this day a good portion of our community is still disenfranchised because of voter identification laws, mass incarceration, and the gerrymandering of electoral districts.
For some Black Americans, the historic and current disenfranchisement of our people fuels their choice to vote. To others, voting is just another institution of white supremacy in the United States. The latter is a hard pill to swallow because it is entirely true. Those of us who do vote do it as an attempt to make sure that things don’t get worse for us.
Voting can be discouraging to Black Americans for additional reasons. The electoral college is an institution that many Americans of all colors are upset about, understandably so. If you’re a blue (Democrat) voter who lives in a red (Republican) majority county, your vote goes towards the popular vote but your county will still count as an electoral vote. The Electoral College carries more weight than the popular vote, as it is required to earn 270 or more electoral votes to win the presidential race.
The two-party system limits our vote, usually between two wealthy white men. Black voters have to choose between which of the two candidates (who are nothing like them) align with their political values most. This can be pretty frustrating to voters who keep up with the political climate and have their own solid set of political values.
America is a very conservative (racist) country, where our “progressive” party, the Democratic party, has plenty of objectively conservative policies. The DNC has no real motivation to enact the drastic change that Black Americans and other minorities need. The way I see things, the DNC is just right of center on the political axis. Voting for a democrat is basically voting to maintain the status quo in the grander scheme of things. On the other hand, we have the far-right GOP with “Make America Great Again” as the presidential slogan. However, as all marginalized people know, America has never been “great” for us.
Black people want our voices to be heard and for change to finally occur. Voting is complicated in the Black community because we need radical change that voting will not solve, but Black voters have to concede to voting for the least harmful candidates and parties. However, on a positive note, we are electing more and more community members into local and state positions of power. The presidential race this cycle is a nightmare, but there are so many intelligent and more than capable Black candidates for local and state elections.
Regardless of whether we cast our ballots or not, voting is about violence for us. Black voters have a treacherous past with our people being tortured and lynched for exercising their right to vote. We live in a country where our government is violent towards us in one way or another, and voting will not change that fact. For Black voters, casting our ballots really comes down to trying to get more community members into local and state positions of power, and to prevent things from getting worse for us.
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