First Time Voter (op-ed)
My daughter’s a freshman in college. She registered to vote and announced she’s a democrat. She entered adolescence and adulthood during the first black presidency. I wasn’t surprised.
If there wasn’t a black president I wondered if she would have declared her independence like I did at that age. My independent registration wasn’t a rejection of the two party system like my white counterparts it was the only choice available in the black community’s one party rule system.
Then I discovered the primaries were closed and if I wanted to participate I had to join the one party that ruled. But when I registered Democratic I didn’t become an individual party member. I was sentenced to the segregated block of electoral politics called the “black vote”.
I didn’t like my options. They were limited and devoid of intellectual integrity. But that didn’t matter because Newt Gingrich and the Republicans seized control of congress for the first time in forty years. And I was told they were rolling back all the gains of the civil rights movement and reelecting Democratic President Bill Clinton was the duty of a first time black voter because it was an act of self defense.
But that was confusing because Clinton didn’t oppose the Republican “Contract with America” he co-opted several of its points. I did my duty, Clinton was reelected, but in the 1996 state of the union address Clinton declared, “The era of big government was over.” He sounded like Newt Gingrich. I thought the “black vote” was suppose to prevent the republicans from “turning back the clock”, but it seemed like it was the “black vote” that was stuck back in time and our collective vote was nothing but tribute for past legislation.
To make matters worse when Clinton’s scandals became public party loyalty was expected by members of the “black vote.” This loyalty went to such extremes that a Noble Prize winning author declared Bill Clinton as “Our first black president … Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime … After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: Single-parent household, born poor, working class.” That wasn’t my black experience but that was the way the Democratic Party characterized the “black vote”.
Now my daughter had an opportunity I didn’t have. She had the chance to be influenced by the first black president and join the Democratic Party as a free thinking individual instead of being initiated into the “black vote.”
So when I asked her why she was a Democrat I expected her to say something about an Obama policy she favored but she gave me a list of religious right positions that she believed was the Republican platform.
So I said: So you’re against the republicans. That’s not what I asked.
She didn’t understand.
I explained: If you were in England and opposed the conservative party that wouldn’t make you the opposite of anything because they have multiple parties. You would have to choose a party for a reason.
Then my daughter told me she was a Democrat and she was voting for Hillary Clinton because Hillary was a woman.
So I asked her about the wisdom of a gender based vote.
She didn’t answer. She returned a question I didn’t expect. “Didn’t you vote for Obama just because he was black?”
I said: It was more than that. It was history.
And she said: Hillary’s history too.
Then I realized she wasn’t influenced by Obama’s presidency and she didn’t care about the Democratic Party or the “black vote”. She remembered black voters crying during the first black president’s inauguration. She connected voting with making a historical difference which every presidential election is regardless of race or gender.
First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 12/16/15
If there wasn’t a black president I wondered if she would have declared her independence like I did at that age. My independent registration wasn’t a rejection of the two party system like my white counterparts it was the only choice available in the black community’s one party rule system.
Then I discovered the primaries were closed and if I wanted to participate I had to join the one party that ruled. But when I registered Democratic I didn’t become an individual party member. I was sentenced to the segregated block of electoral politics called the “black vote”.
I didn’t like my options. They were limited and devoid of intellectual integrity. But that didn’t matter because Newt Gingrich and the Republicans seized control of congress for the first time in forty years. And I was told they were rolling back all the gains of the civil rights movement and reelecting Democratic President Bill Clinton was the duty of a first time black voter because it was an act of self defense.
But that was confusing because Clinton didn’t oppose the Republican “Contract with America” he co-opted several of its points. I did my duty, Clinton was reelected, but in the 1996 state of the union address Clinton declared, “The era of big government was over.” He sounded like Newt Gingrich. I thought the “black vote” was suppose to prevent the republicans from “turning back the clock”, but it seemed like it was the “black vote” that was stuck back in time and our collective vote was nothing but tribute for past legislation.
To make matters worse when Clinton’s scandals became public party loyalty was expected by members of the “black vote.” This loyalty went to such extremes that a Noble Prize winning author declared Bill Clinton as “Our first black president … Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime … After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: Single-parent household, born poor, working class.” That wasn’t my black experience but that was the way the Democratic Party characterized the “black vote”.
Now my daughter had an opportunity I didn’t have. She had the chance to be influenced by the first black president and join the Democratic Party as a free thinking individual instead of being initiated into the “black vote.”
So when I asked her why she was a Democrat I expected her to say something about an Obama policy she favored but she gave me a list of religious right positions that she believed was the Republican platform.
So I said: So you’re against the republicans. That’s not what I asked.
She didn’t understand.
I explained: If you were in England and opposed the conservative party that wouldn’t make you the opposite of anything because they have multiple parties. You would have to choose a party for a reason.
Then my daughter told me she was a Democrat and she was voting for Hillary Clinton because Hillary was a woman.
So I asked her about the wisdom of a gender based vote.
She didn’t answer. She returned a question I didn’t expect. “Didn’t you vote for Obama just because he was black?”
I said: It was more than that. It was history.
And she said: Hillary’s history too.
Then I realized she wasn’t influenced by Obama’s presidency and she didn’t care about the Democratic Party or the “black vote”. She remembered black voters crying during the first black president’s inauguration. She connected voting with making a historical difference which every presidential election is regardless of race or gender.
First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 12/16/15
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