Are you fighting for my voice or just my vote?
16th May 2016 · 0 Comments
By Irna L. Landrum
Guest Columnist
White supremacy is a marvelously adaptive system of destruction. Cut off one of its heads and it grows another, identical in purpose if not appearance. White supremacy, since its inception, has been singularly focused on the subjugation and death of all that is not white. To meet this end, whiteness itself has expanded throughout history to include previously excluded groups, like the Irish and American Jews.
When whiteness could no longer legally hold Blackness in the chains of slavery, it found ways to recapture Black bodies for profit. Since the emancipation and naturalization of enslaved Black folks, whiteness has schemed and plotted to keep Black folks from active civic participation. From literacy tests to poll taxes to grandfather clauses to outright terrorism and violence, whiteness has worked its ass off to silence all that is not white.
No matter how the law transformed to protect the voting rights of Black Americans, whiteness moved in subversion. And now that the high court of the land has gutted our most essential voting rights protections, the Black vote is again under fire, through a wave of seemingly innocuous voter ID laws.
“Everyone has photo ID, right?”
Just like their predecessors, voter ID laws most deeply impact Black voters, who are most likely to lack proper or completely up-to-date photo identification. Just like their predecessors, voter ID laws compel Black people to clear an additional hurdle to prove they deserve to exercise a constitutionally guaranteed right. And just like their predecessors, proponents of voter ID laws know full well that there is no empirical need for them, except to cull the voting rolls.
Despite whomever else these laws impact, voter ID laws pose the greatest challenge to communities of color, and Black folks in particular. These laws are racist, and continue a racist legacy of Black disenfranchisement. They carry on a tradition of whiteness—to choke silent the political voice of Black Americans, no matter what the law, or Constitution, or Supreme Court decide.
Progressives reliably decry voter ID laws as partisan trickery that hurts Democrats. Voter ID requirements are framed, and rightly so, as Republicans trying to tip the election scales in their favor. But I sometimes doubt that our collective outrage is fueled by insistence on a just process, as much as it is that voter ID laws hurt our chances at winning.
The faithful left certainly didn’t shed many tears when New York’s strict primary rules prevented Eric and Ivanka Trump from voting for their father. Yet those supporting Bernie Sanders’ insurgent candidacy lambasted the rules as overly restrictive and a barrier to full participation (for them), while Democratic Party loyalists staunchly defended the need for a pure nominating process, ensured by closed primaries.
We debate the merits of primaries over caucuses, proportional delegate allocation, superdelegates and so on, landing on whichever side of the debate best supports our candidate’s chance of victory—even if we abandon previous positions to do so.
So as a Black voter, more likely than most to be impacted by the proliferation of voter ID laws, my question is this: Does the Democratic party oppose these laws because it values my rights, or does the party oppose these laws because it assumes it can count on my vote?
Almost every election I’ve voted in, since my first huge disappointment in 2000, I have held my nose to vote for the Democratic candidate. I’ve felt trapped between a conservative rock and an allegedly liberal hard place, stuck in a two-party system where neither party engages my community particularly well.
Republicans have apparently accepted they will not get a large number of Black votes. Still, their attempts to woo us are wrapped in patronizing messages that urge us to get off the Democratic plantation and stop being victimized by promises of free stuff.
Democrats appear to rely on Republicans being so cartoonishly evil that we’ll just pull the lever for them instead. Except when we don’t vote the way we’re expected to, we are scolded by people who are deeply concerned about our best interests, though not enough to start asking what those are. Or, we are treated like hustlers who reneged on our end of a deal.
It seems whiteness knows no party affiliation. Whiteness infantilizes Blackness, knows what’s best for it, and doesn’t trust that Blackness has the capacity to reason and judge. Even progressive whiteness declares itself the arbiter of truth, requiring near endless explanation of Black rationale, never quite convinced of our experiences or conclusions.
In 2008, the Clinton campaign behaved as though Black voters had betrayed them, as though they were owed our support. They downplayed the importance of Black voters in Southern states posting strong numbers for Sen. Obama. They suggested again and again that Black voters voted with their Black skin to support Obama, refusing to consider that we had weighed the evidence and had found it wanting.
When California’s Proposition 8 passed, liberals swiftly blamed Black voters for their loss—despite an utter lack of outreach into Black communities and math that would prove this racist backlash a lie. Even though no one had thoughtfully engaged Black voters in the issue, liberals simply expected allegiance, while the lack of non-Black support for Black movements is painfully felt.
Years later, as we are still trying to scrub #AllLivesMatter out of purportedly progressive mouths who struggle to give us the solidarity of even a hashtag, the Bernie Sanders campaign is downplaying the importance of Black voters in Southern states posting strong numbers for Secretary Clinton. They have resurrected the faux concern for our best interests, while shushing us when we name our interest in economic policies, like reparations, aimed directly and specifically at Black communities. They tell us how divisive and impractical this ask is, while championing free college tuition and a single payer healthcare system.
Even political revolution dares us to dream as big as we can possibly dream, unless we dream of revolutionaries who will pull off their gloves and battle white supremacy, no holds barred.
It is always Blackness that must concede, Blackness that must temper expectations, and Blackness that must take one for the team. Blackness must find softer language lest it alienate supporters, though what is support when it is held hostage in this way? What is a supporter who demands your fealty while his support for you is so conditional?
So, does the progressive movement want Black voices or Black votes?
Either way, we should fight to end racist voter ID laws, and every other adaptation of white supremacist disenfranchisement. (Ever look into ex-felon voting rights?)
But if we care about Black people as voices in our political activism, and not just votes to advance our agenda, we will engage differently. We will wrestle to understand where we’ve fallen short, or why the candidates we champion don’t capture the hearts of Black voters the same way. We will work to understand and incorporate a comprehensive Black agenda, up to and including reparations, into the broader progressive movement.
If we care about Black progressive voices, we will develop a vocabulary and skill set around institutional racism and not get caught up in defensiveness. At bare minimum, we could battle voter suppression as a nefarious form of racism and not just a tactic that disadvantages us in elections.
**Whiteness here refers to the top position in a system of racial hierarchy, and not individual white people. If you feel singled out by this, do some self-examination. Thanks!
Irna L. Landrum writes a blog for Daily Kos where this op-ed originally appeared.
This article originally published in the May 16, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
