At the beginning of this semester I began a journey with my students in my African Americans in Contemporary Urban Society class that has informed my thinking deeply. This journey is paired with my recent graduation from UCLA—which basically says I have now studied and am ready to go out and do my part to make America a more equal nation. However, somewhere between graduation and my teaching this particular Fall course, there is a question that has come to haunt me consistently: what does it mean to be equal in the United States? What does it mean to have an equal voice in the oppression and genocide of others throughout the world as I sit comfortably with two college degrees in sunny Southern California? Quickly I began to realize the clear sky I experience in Southern California is clear and without smoke from bombs, because other nations (such as Syria and Palestine) are being bombed and occupied. Moreover I also realized I am complicit in the bombing and occupation they experience because I voted for Barack Obama. Twice. A president, who supports a pro-Israel agenda, drone attacks in Syria, the deportation of Mexican and African peoples, and the military/police abuse of Native Americans, and desecration of Native American land.
What is the weight of the vote in the US?
Voting has been impressed upon me since I was a child. I used to look at those “I voted” stickers and say to myself “I want one.” As a southern Black child a common colloquialism I often heard was “people died for you to vote.” This saying of course compelled me to vote—because somehow this piece of marked paper (or touchscreen now-a-days) is the reason why Black people were assassinated and plotted against: to keep Black people out of the voting booth. Amazingly, this is what I believed when I was younger: that the goal of White people was to keep Black people out of the voting booth.
In the class I am teaching the primary text I use is Keeanga-Yahmatta Taylor’s From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. While Taylor covers many issues pertinent to Black Americans in the text, her point is obvious: Taylor sees the Black Lives Matter Movement as a way of facilitating Black Liberation. Now, admittedly, Black Liberation, is its own conversation; however, I do believe that centering Black Liberation is useful in our current time. One of Taylor’s most compelling chapters in the text is titled “Black Faces in High Places.” In this chapter she details how Black political leadership has repeatedly outfitted themselves with the Master’s tools in the name of progress to only end up furthering the White Supremacist regime in which we live in the United States. While Taylor points to President Barack Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus, her most searing critique is leveled on local Black leaders. An example that stands out is that of state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby (a Black official), who demanded justice for Freddie Gray, yet in the weeks leading up to Freddie Gray’s murder, personally ordered more police to be placed in Freddie Gray’s West Baltimore neighborhood. Marilyn Mosby’s response to West Baltimore’s 24% unemployment rate and median income of 25,000 (less than half the median income of the rest of Baltimore) was more police. Interestingly, study after study has shown the link between poverty and crime (Taylor, 78). As it relates to Gray, State’s Attorney Mosby “directed the police department to target the intersection where they first encountered Gray with ‘enhanced drug enforcement efforts’” (Taylor, 79). Furthermore, Mosby admonished police that she would monitor them every day with “daily measurables”—meaning arrests and citations. Marilyn Mosby was not alone in her mis-characterization of capitalist induced poverty. Baltimore Mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, also Black, described those in West Baltimore who are marginalized by capitalism as “criminals” and “thugs.”
Mosby and Rawlings-Blake are not unique in their mis-characterization of Black people living in capitalist America; from Orlando to Atlanta, from New York to Los Angeles, and every city in between, Black people living in cities under Black leadership are experiencing the same effects as those living in cities under White leadership. This, perhaps the real Black-on-Black crime, reveals two things: 1. The complicit behavior of Black politicians in a White supremacist system; 2. A need to look elsewhere for the liberation of Black souls.
Audre Lorde’s well known words ring true when we examine Black leadership in the twenty-first century: the Master’s tools will never dismantle the Master’s house. As much as this often repeated and cited quote is offered, I am not quite certain that Most understand the political stakes of it. Yet, the truth of it is made manifest in the example of Baltimore (and many other cities as well). Lorde’s words come into sharper relief when we consider one of King’s underquoted statements: I fear I have integrated my people into a burning house. These quotes offered by Lorde and King, suggests to those of us living in twenty-first century America that no US political system will be able to facilitate for Black people what is needed: liberation. That is to say in a capitalist, White supremacist, and militarized State, Black people will always be short of liberation because White freedom and liberation (and maintaining that) is the goal. Furthermore, Lorde and King’s words reveal yet another truth: Black people did not die for me to have the right to vote, rather they died in search of liberation for me; and upon drawing closer to liberation they were killed by those who desired to keep oppressive and White supremacist structures in place. This is a different, and I argue, accurate reasoning for Black deaths at the hands of the State and rogue White supremacists (who also have among them Black co-conspirators). Stop telling Black people that Black people died trying to access the White voting apparatus; start telling Black people that Black people died in an attempt to be liberated. (to be clear there are (and were) several tactics of liberation. Some, yes, saw voting as a means to the end of liberation; however, there are (and were) many other different approaches as well; therefore Black people didn’t die trying to vote, they died trying to get free—and that is a different narrative).
“In what ways do I contribute to the subjugation of any part of those who I call my people?”
–Audre Lorde
Admittedly, Audre Lorde is perhaps one of my favorite people for many reasons. Her challenge to heteronormativity, male oppression (hello Black men!), capitalism, and White rule speaks to me in many ways. The above quote from Lorde resonates deeply with me and is a quote with which I have wrestled with internally for many months now. Several days I have thought to myself these words: “in what ways do I contribute to the subjugation of any part of those I call my people, and what implications does this have in voting?” The protests of Standing Rock, the nationwide Prisoner’s Strike, deportations, and Black Lives Matter has only served to heighten this question in my most inner self. This haunting question from Lorde is met with daily collisions with Trump, Clinton, Stein, and Johnson ads, along with false claims of a vote for this person is a vote the other; or a vote for a third party candidate is a vote for whomever. However, the question that has stayed with me is: “in what ways do I contribute to the subjugation of any part of those I call my people, and what implications does this have in voting?”
In other words, what does it mean for me to vote for any candidate who is campaigning to be in charge of the most oppressive capitalist imperialist white supremacist structure in the known world? What does this mean in terms of individual ethics and morality? Is it moral to vote for a candidate who will continue the US capitalist, racist, and war machine? Is it ethical to vote for a candidate who will say that Black Lives Matter, but will not speak to the cause of my Native American sisters and brothers who are currently in a battle with both the US military and US corporations (but then again how loudly can one speak when those corporations are funding your campaign *waves hello at Hillary*). Is it ethical or moral to vote for the lesser of two evils, as the presence of evil itself goes unaddressed? Here another Audre Lorde quote is fitting: “there is no hierarchy of oppression.”
To be clear, I reject a politics of coercion—a type of political engagement that says either: 1. a vote for this person, is a vote for another; or, 2. if you do not vote you should not speak. I reject these coercive approaches. I choose to speak back to those particular forces which oppress me and those around me because my goal is liberation, not participation; abolition, not inclusion. That is a different approach, and that is why I will speak. This is why I will truly resist. This is why I will continue to write: because the challenge of the twenty-first century is white capitalist imperialism. It invades every part of our lives: from public policy to educational attainment, from having enough food to being able to freely travel the world.
I choose to search for a new political terrain that is beyond the dreams of Hobbes, Locke, Bentham and many others. What we are currently living in is their dream, their point-of-view of reality—I decidedly decline. It is time to imagine a new political reality beyond the realm of borders, capitalism, imperialism, and militarization that demands a marginalized and underperforming other to guarantee its own stability. I reject a vote that demands a reallocation of resources in a capitalist system; because funding a needed program, such as homelessness, depletes funds for other needed initiatives as those at the top refuse to negotiate the capital accumulating in their accounts; I reject a politics that says choose your oppression. Yes, Black Lives Do Matter, however, because there is no hierarchy of oppression—I understand the implications and importance of Standing Rock, the Prisoner’s Strike, Syria, Palestine, deportation, and many other issues (and if you look close enough you will discover that these issues are Black issues too).
I reject Oprah Winfrey’s recent comment on T.D. Jake’s show that we should vote for Hillary, even if we do not like her because what is more important is “do we love this country?”; and, moreover, for Winfrey we should not be too concerned because Hillary “ain’t coming to your house.” It is not about love for country, it is about the recognition of life and the goal of liberation—loving this country has meant many things to people of color: underemployment, unemployment, mass incarceration, racial profiling, racist government-backed housing policies, segregated neighborhoods, under resourced schools and institutions, and much more (particularly when we problematize these areas within the lens of gender, non-heteronormativity, non-gender conformitivity). Interestingly enough, Hillary has come to our homes. She has come as the National Guard beating and shooting Sioux people. She has come in impossible to time raids by Immigration and Custom Enforcement. She has come in her support of mandatory minimums and prison expansion. She has come in her deceiving and underhanded charitable help of Haiti. She has come in the refusal of Palestinian recognition. She has come in the continuing terrorization of the world through bombs and wars. Not only has she come to our homes, she has forced her way to the table, consumed all our food and called us super predators when we forged ways to replenish the supply she consumed without permission.
What I am in search of is liberation; and while I do not know what that place looks like exactly, I do know what it does not look like—it does not look like inclusion in this US political system. I do know that it may potentially look like Haiti who wrested itself from the grip of France—a nation who still plunders Haiti to this day (yet those who are from France will claim there is no presence of racism in the nation). If Haiti were given back access to control of its own natural resources, might we have a more clear model of what Black liberation looks like? What we do learn from Black nations like Haiti is that Black liberation means poverty in a White imperialist and capitalist world.
What I do know for sure, is that for me voting is not a means for liberation. Rather, it is a process that demands I check boxes for policies and candidates that will inevitably mean harm to myself and another. I recognize my living is resistance to the State. Surely there is a way of facilitating our world beyond political bifurcation, beyond the demand and requirement of an underperforming and unacknowledged other, and beyond a coercive and utilitarian politics. This is the call of abolition—that we imagine and work toward a world in which State terrorization and rule in our daily lives—personal, local, national, and international—is brought to a halt. Everyone must examine themselves from their own subject position—privilege is both afforded and refused at the same time in our current political apparatus. If my vote is complicit in the continuation of State terrorization in the lives of many, as voting is often offered as the voice of the people, then I, like Lorde, have need to ask myself “in what ways do I contribute to the subjugation of any part of those who I call my people?”
