Every election cycle I find myself confronted by the memes that say, “If you don’t vote, then you can’t complain,” or my personal favorite, “Our ancestors died for the right to vote.” These are frequently written by black people aimed at other black people, “reminders” by way of guilt trips.
There’s usually a lot of disgust that comes with reading those statistics. But I get it. I mean, think about all the wrongheaded rhetoric and political tactics black people are subjected to every election cycle. Especially in Illinois, where the Democratic party consistently takes the loyalty of black voters for granted.
On one hand, you have a faction within both Bernie Sanders’s and Hillary Clinton’s base who’ve used a paternalistic tone, telling black voters what is good for them. Clinton’s support of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, commonly known as the “crime bill,” is widely viewed as the forerunner of today’s era of mass incarceration, sticks in the mind of many black voters. It didn’t help that Clinton was also seen as being dismissive towards Black Lives Matter protesters who crashed one of her fundraisers.
At this point, we’ve seen the Doomsday scenarios for the frontrunners in both parties described in great detail. When the GOP frontrunner says “Let’s Make America Great Again,” is he saying he wants to make America unsafe everyone who isn’t a white male? When Clinton made similar comments about the framers of the Constitution, she conveniently forgot to mention that some of those men were slaveowners.
