When Progressives Tell Me Who to Vote For

A Black Eyed Story ** This is a Grown Folks Conversation. I Get Very Cussy in This One.

Black voters in Harlem NY in 1954

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**This is a Grown Folks Conversation. I Very Cussy in This One and I’m Not Sorry about It.**

CNN did it again. I clicked on a news clip promising a conversation between Kaitlan Collins and Maggie Haberman (two White women whose reporting I somewhat trust and whose opinions I sometimes agree with). They were talking about John Kelly’s remarks about Trump’s high regard of Hitler and his generals. Not even five minutes into the conversation and CNN pulls another bait-and-switch. Clearly they felt Maggie and Kaitlan’s thoughts needed a man’s endorsement. 

This time it was John Bolton to the rescue, lest they lose their male viewers. Apparently this guy’s words were supposed to make Maggie’s claims more believable. I guess the white mustache sitting atop his stiff upper lip like a combed out tumbleweed was supposed to make Kaitlan’s show appear more unbiased. 

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Find an Audio Recording of This Black Eyed Story Above

So first I’m watching a conversation I wanted to hear and then suddenly I’m watching a conversation I hate but can’t turn off because that’s what watching the news is like these days. 

Kaitlan says to Bolton: 

“You’re not voting for Trump but you’re also not voting for Vice President Harris… What about people who are sitting at home listening to John Kelly say that Trump meets the definition of a fascist. That he said nice things about Hitler. The reporting that he didn’t want to pay for a Mexican-American soldier’s funeral because it cost too much which the Trump campaign denies – but people who sit there and say, ‘Well, you know, that seems to be an obvious choice based on what we’re hearing.’” 

Bolton says a lot of things about John Kelly being a man of character and Trump being an absolute idiot who isn’t even capable of forming a fascist agenda because he couldn’t get through Mein Kampf. He then says:

“I think certainly this recitation of what [Trump’s] done should be compelling for people not to vote for him. Trump said after leaving office, said it publicly, he would suspend the constitution, or terminate it because of the unfairness of the effort to steal the 2020 election. That statement alone! If he’d said nothing else, if he’d never mentioned the words ‘Adolf Hitler’ that alone is disqualifying in my point of view. So if people are troubled and many Republicans are… They don’t like Donald Trump at all. I don’t like the media commentators who say the entire Republican Party belongs to Donald Trump now. I know plenty of Republicans that will vote for him only with gritted teeth because they fear and they worry about Kamala Harris. I think the answer is don’t vote for either one of them. But don’t give your vote to Donald Trump.” 

Listen. These Republicans who supposedly hate Trump are long-time career politicians who know what’s at stake better than the average American. They also know, better than the average voter, how elections work. And they all know that a non-vote in this election is as good as a vote for Trump. 

They also know its the electoral college, not the popular vote, that wins. And because of our history of slavery, lucky for them, the electoral college leans in favor of red, conservative states that enjoy Republican minority-rule. They know that in a race with polls this close, the non-votes could very well end democracy as we know it. But most of all they know a begrudged vote for Trump is a vote for the party of Trump. They know their accomplices. But worst of all, they know their refusal to vote for Harris, even though such a vote would save our country from the whims of a demented, delusional, foolish, felony-ridden, creepy old man, is a sad attempt to hold what little remaining power they have. They covet the tyrannical patriarchy and supremacy their founding fathers enjoyed. They’d rather vote for the wanna-be dictator because, at the very least, he’s White and male and makes them laugh with his tall-dick-tales. At the very least, he’s not a Black Democrat-Jezebel who they know is far more fit for the job and a lesser threat to democracy. They don’t care that she’s more concerned for the welfare and survival of their beloved party than Trump ever will be. They will vote for him because they fear a world that looks less like Trump and more like Kamala. 

Rev. Fred C. Bennette Jr. registers voters in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1963

Here’s the problem y’all: American democracy doesn’t recognize evil, even when it bites it dead in the face. 

Our country blew its first chance for a true democracy built for freedom when we only allowed White male landowners to vote. And guess who they voted for? A White, male, landowning enslaver. We voted for a White male enslaver 12 times over. Eight of them remained enslavers of Black bodies while in office. So not only was our first democratic vote for freedom won by an enslaver, but also a racist. I’m sure there were many voters who were anti-slavery, but who gritted their teeth and voted for the enslaver because he was better for the economy, or because he was a general, or because he was a man they’d like to have a beer with. They gritted their teeth and voted for the unfavorable because they favored Whiteness and feared Blackness even though they disliked seeing it bound in shackles, chained to cotton and tobacco and sugar fields. They liked tobacco and sugar and cotton, but most especially they liked the money the trade of those goods put in their pockets. And since they didn’t personally own any enslaved bodies, they felt they could grit their teeth and look away from the human suffering and absolute genocide of a whole-ass culture and vote their party. 

Republicans benefit from Trump’s antics and so they will grin and bear his rallies and ramblings and felonies and indictments and impeachments and gross locker-room talk and even grosser caught-on-tape confessions about mauling women with kisses and grabbing them by the pussy. They’d rather align with his leadership than submit to a woman. Remember? They could have supported Nikki Haley. She’s racist and supports the patriarchy too… but nope. They chose Trump. John Bolton and his little friends will never endorse a Black woman for President. They’d rather follow Adolf Hitler into the camps than Harriet Tubman into freedom. It’s not fair to Harris that it comes down to this, but let’s not kid ourselves: this is America.

The Republicans aren’t the only ones willing to roll the dice on the future of our democracy. Many progressive, anti-racist, blue or green or blue-green voters refuse to vote for Harris because of the war in Palestine. And while some of that is absolutely admirable, a lot of it has become the white noise of absolute White nonsense. 

As usual in our history it’s far easier for White folks to come to the rescue of Brown and Black folks outside our borders than within our borders. It’s easier for White progressives to march in protest of the Black lives lost than to stand for up for the Black lives that are still breathing. It’s easier for them to point to the destruction in another country than see the doom and devastation in their own cities and states. They remind me of colorblind church missionaries who don’t see color until they’re on their way to serve in Haiti. They believe God is fully concerned with the injustice befalling Brown and Black folks way, way, over there, far across the ocean. But somehow they’re not convinced God cares about the systemic injustice running through Black and Brown communities here in this country. 

These are the non-Black, so-called anti-racist social media “missionaries.” They’re doing their best to be of service to Palestinians but they couldn’t tell you the name of the last unarmed Black man killed by police. Police brutality and racial injustice in this country is old news. These social justice warriors are donating their feeds and sometimes money to end the war in Gaza. They’ve forgotten all about their outrage over the mass shootings and book bans and drag show bans and trans and queer hate crimes they were heavily posting about in 2020, 2021 and 2022. They have no capacity to carry those things any longer. Their privilege allows them to trade in those woes for the more viral one of the moment. They’ve gone back to moving about their world without having to hold the discomfort of domestic horrors. They’ve picked the trending issue and have dug in their heels. And it’s really not their fault. Our newsfeeds are no longer keeping count of Black American lives lost. We no longer hear about all the shootings or hate crimes. They know our country is still in trouble, but it’s easier to look over there. Not easier because it’s less horrible. The genocide in Palestine isn’t less horrendous or bloody. But it’s distant. You can protest, rant and scream about it and get your Whole Foods order delivered, go out to dinner, meet up for coffee with friends, swipe right on Tinder. The fact of this doesn’t make them hypocrites. We’re all just living here. What makes them hypocrites is their inability to understand that the injustice over here is linked to the injustice over there. You can’t dismiss one while claiming to care deeply about the other. 

Right now, there’s a violently anti-immigrant, anti-Black, infamous and documented racist running for president and polling very well. A Black woman is his opponent. Most Black Americans fully support her, but White progressives won’t vote for her even if their non-vote runs the risk of a raging, hateful racist becoming president. To take it even further, they don’t want me to vote for her or post support for her. They don’t want me to sway my followers to vote for this Black woman, yet they constantly slide into my DMs to tell me how they care more about Black lives than I do because they care more about Palestinian lives than I do. They tell me that of course they’re listening to Black women. They ask me, “Are you?” I tell well, yes, I’m listening to the millions of Black women who support Kamala. They tell me to follow the one or two Black women they follow who say all of us Black women supporting Kamala are supporting genocide. I tell them to go learn some history and kindly fuck off.

A group of Black people raise their hands as they take an oath during a voter registration drive on June 18, 1966

It would be wonderful if our country wasn’t a two-party system. But it is. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to expect more from our elections, but I do think it’s unrealistic and dangerous to expect a three-party system when for the past four years we didn’t work to secure one. We can’t just expect a third party candidate to be the better option just because they’re there. I think it’s risky and a little racist to not give a damn about the lives at risk if a party polling at less than 5% takes votes away from an actual Black candidate who is fighting the tyranny of a racist asshole. I think casting a vote that has no chance of winning and might possible ensure the win of a racist president might make you an asshole who can’t hold two thoughts at once. Yes, we must not look away from Palestine, and yes, we must vote for Harris because she’s the only one in the race who can beat Trump. 

I get some folks wanna burn the whole system down. Well, great. So we burn down a system of democracy that has yet to show us the beauty of what it could be? Black folks’ votes are still being suppressed. We just got here and people are talking about blowing the system up! For what? To save Palestine? We haven’t worked hard enough in this country to fix our fragile political system, and yet we’re sure we can fix another country’s even more fragile democracy? How arrogant. We haven’t voted for the endangered Black and Brown children in this country but we’ll vote for the babies in another country? 

If someone tells me they’re a feminist, antiracist, pro-LGBTQIA, pro-Black and pro-immigrant liberation seeker but they neglect the marginalized ones in their own country, I don’t trust them to set the captives free in another country. It doesn’t make sense to allow even a sliver of a chance for the candidate who is beloved by White supremacists and friendly with serial sexual assaulters to win. A vote isn’t an absolute. It’s a wish and a prayer blown in the right direction. I really have nothing to say to these so called warriors who are holding their breaths and their tantrums without any regard of whom it may hurt, without any regard for those lives in Palestine they claim to be voting Green for – which is essentially is not voting at all. 

In a comments section on some non-voter’s feed, a Muslim woman reminded me that Palestinians stood with Black people during the George Floyd protests.

I replied: Aren’t I standing for Palestinians and the memory of George Floyd by making sure that the guy who wanted to shoot George Floyd protesters in the legs doesn’t become the next president?  Shouldn’t I make sure my vote takes out the guy who threatened to deport pro-Palestine protesters? 

They replied: Vote Jill Stein 💚

I replied: Show me she can win. 

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Residents from Alabama stand in line outside the Supreme Court for a chance to hear oral arguments in Shelby County v. Holder, a legal challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, on February 27, 2013

When White people posted those ridiculous Black squares in 2020, all I could see was a collage of non-Black and White performative activism in lieu of life-long commitments to deeply embedded activism. It’s easy to say “Defund the Police,” but it’s hard to understand the steps involved in bringing that day about. When I started to see these same folks posting “Ceasefire”, I wondered if there would be anything more they could add to the complex conversation of global supremacy and racism. They never did. Instead, they bombarded folks with reposted videos and pictures of the trauma like they posted videos and pictures of the air leaving George Floyd’s body, or videos and pictures of Michael Brown laying in the street for hours. This was their one-two-punch activism. 

When I witnessed these same people chastising Black thinkers, activists and influencers for not protest-voting or not posting enough images of trauma and declarations of solidarity, I felt like I was watching Black folks being stopped by the police. It felt like the authorities were asking Black folks to pull over and show them their license and registration to prove their Blackness while being profiled because of their Blackness. It didn’t matter to them that up until October 7^th these warriors rarely if ever considered the rights of Palestinians. It didn’t matter to them that Black folks had been saying “Free Palestine” for decades. October 2023 wasn’t a surprise to Black Americans. We were some of the very first to see things from the perspective of Palestinians. And when we spoke about that perspective, White progressives called us anti-semites. They claimed we were complicit in Jewish hate but also complicit in Palestinian genocide. We couldn’t win. 

So excuse me, you progressive-wannabe-trauma-seeking-flesh-eating-one-issue-non-voters, but didn’t y’all just get here? I’m sorry but do you think your little non-vote will save Palestinians like your little Black squares saved us? Did you really read our books? This shit isn’t simply complicated. It’s fucked. We told you in books, in movies, on podcasts, in articles and in the literal streets. We told you we’ve been voting for the lesser of two evils for generations. If you wanted to offer us a viable third-party option, you woulda-coulda-shoulda decades ago. So fuck you and the white lame horse that you and Jill Stein rode in on. We’ve been long-suffering. Our liberation is in our blood. Trust and believe, you wouldn’t have the liberties you currently enjoy if it weren’t for our willingness to hold our noses and vote for the candidates who we knew weren’t for us. Thank god that despite their lack of love for us, we got what we needed from JFK and LBJ. Thank god that we were able to look past Obama’s flawed policies to see the greater good of having our first Black president. We knew we couldn’t wait on you to save us. Thank god our people ran towards freedom long before it was given to us.

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Black voters in Atlanta in 1946

In 2000, White liberals refused to vote for Al Gore because he was Bill Clinton’s VP. To be perfectly clear, White liberals are some of the most informed voters. They knew that the Vice President didn’t have significant power. They knew that the President, along with Congress and the Supreme Court, held all the power. They knew Al Gore was a small factor in any of Clinton’s policies or antics. But they wouldn’t vote for him. They voted for Ralph Nader – even though they knew Ralph Nader would never win. They said the same thing many progressives are saying now, “We need a third party!” and “I won’t vote for the lesser of two evils.” And guess what? The Supreme Court awarded the win to the Republican candidate who’d won by only 5 electoral college votes. If Al Gore had received 538 more votes, he would’ve won. Imagine what Gore might have done differently than Bush when our nation was attacked by terrorists. Might he have handled it with less xenophobia? Might he have avoided waging war? Might our Supreme Court look vastly different? Might Trump never have become president years later? We’ll never know because some assholes decided to throw away their votes. 

Better yet, I want you to imagine this election coming down to a Supreme Court ruling. Who do you think they’ll say won? 

Jill Stein is a White woman whose own family, including her son, has asked her not to run because of the disastrous effect her run caused in 2016. Her votes were a big reason why Trump, who didn’t have the popular vote, was able to win the office. Hillary Clinton should have won. She was polling to win. But Stein entered the race and, well, the rest is what it was. 

Stein is the first to say we need a third party system but she doesn’t do any real campaigning for a viable third party system run. She leaps in when it counts the most with the help of Trump’s lawyers putting her on the ballot. Her goal isn’t to win. It’s to keep the Democrats from winning. She knows a third party vote will only aid Donald Trump. Donald Trump knows this and has said so: “Jill Stein… I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100% from them.” This is why former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke endorsed her. Going on the record on his podcast Duke said: 

Although Dr. Stein and I obviously have our differences on important issues, she’s the only candidate who speaks clearly against the war in the Middle East and Ukraine. By opposing Jewish supremacy in Israel and Jewish mass murder in Israel, and the policies of the American government in these insane wars and the Ukrainian war there, she’s actually doing something which is harming this Jewish power.  

Stein denounced his endorsement, but she still wouldn’t drop out the race. She doesn’t seem to care that Klan members and White supremacists will come out and vote for her. Her followers don’t seem concerned by this new fact either. To me, anyone voting for Stein is voting against Black and Brown and Jewish people and they can go fuck off. 

Stein is a doctor and Harvard graduate. She’s not stupid. She understands what her presidential run will cost us. She’ll gladly take votes that won’t serve her. She won’t give up her measly 1 percent of the votes even though she knows they are of no use to her. She’s well aware that her 1 percent could definitely put Trump back into office. In her words, “Forget the lesser evil. Fight for the greater good.” So I guess fuck me and my Black life and my Black queer kid’s life.

Both Republicans and so-called pro-Palestine liberals who hate Donald Trump because they know he’s a fool intent on terrorizing American democracy are willing to withhold their vote, or vote green, to punish Harris. I can understand the former but I can’t forgive the latter who claim that Black Lives Matter. How can Black lives matter to them when their vote or non-vote is supported by Trump and David Duke and therefore will most definitely count against Black lives in this country? They know Donald Trump is a threat to democracy but they can’t bear with their distaste of Harris – not on every issue, mind you, just some. How is it that a former leader of the Klan found a way to vote for a candidate he doesn’t 100% agree with, but these anti-Trump yahoos can’t fathom voting for Harris? Don’t they remember we’ve done this before? First with Al Gore and then with Hillary Clinton.

I know there are people who are mad as hell about Palestine and I am too. But is not-voting going to give any of us the ultimate win of a ceasefire and a free Palestine? Nope. But non votes and green votes could surely give us our greatest defeat – one from which we may never recover.

Look at the history. This small-minded, racist tyrant could win. This motherfucker could win. 

And it would be because of non-Black and White progressives – not Black men. 

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