Bernie Sanders and the African American Vote
Black Feminists Don’t Owe Hillary Clinton Their Support
If I were a middle-class white woman, I would probably love Hillary Clinton.
Be clear: HRC has faced and continues to face extreme sexism. The misogyny is palpable. If she were a man, she would be finishing her second term and prepping for the Supreme Court by now. She can run with the big dogs and win because women know how to get it done. What exactly she'll get done, however, is up for debate.
So I say this without centering Bill Clinton's presidency—even though she played a critical role in his administration, which is just one part of her political career. I say this without talking about his morals or her hair or her "cankles," or her penchant for pantsuits, because anyone who does that will do it to any woman, at any time, from corporate America to the corners of America. I say this without insisting that she needs to smile more or be more approachable, less formidable or less intimidating:
"Abuela" Clinton has some issues that screaming "sexism" just won't fix.
And there are ills within the Democratic Party that evoking the GOP bogeyman just won't cure.
I get it; it is terrifying. This good-cop, bad-cop routine that Republicans and Democrats have perfected is convincing. But we will never really break this system—because it's not broken; it's working exactly as intended—if we allow our votes to be held hostage by identity politics and cosmetic diversity. There are questions that we need to ask ourselves, hard questions that we need to be free to ask our elected officials, without apology or caveats.
Are incarceration rates high? Yes.
Is reproductive-health-care access severely restricted for low-income women of color, particularly in the rural South? Yes.
Is the privatization and tokenizing of education that allows for the closure of public schools around the country making it harder for low-income students of color to receive a competitive education? Yes.
Are police officers killing and raping us? Yes.
Are our children being subjected to poisoned water? Yes.
And that's just a sample questionnaire. I've heard a lot of "indict the system" black revolutionaries and so-called allies say, "If we don't vote Democrat, a Republican will be in office and Armageddon will be upon us."
Well, Armageddon is already here, and this Democratic-or-GOP, lesser-of-two-evils seesaw has done nothing but make us dizzy.
So how do we stop it? I don't know, but I do know that my ancestors didn't march and martyr themselves for me to be held hostage by my vote simply because a woman is running for office, who not only actively participated in laying the groundwork for some of these conditions but has also not convinced me that she is sincere in her claims that she will fight Congress for policies to rectify them.
It may be an unpopular stance to take in some feminist circles, but my vote is worth much more than that. Democrats and Republicans, through damaging economic and punitive policies, have marginalized, oppressed and killed too many people of color, specifically black Americans, and I refuse to let them assassinate my political imagination, too.
I refuse to let them strangle my belief in the improbable—an America in which black women and the people we love are no longer targets trapped in the crosshairs of a weaponized political system—just so a woman can walk through the doors of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. as commander in chief, as powerful and poetic as that may seem on the surface.
If that makes me a bad feminist, so be it.
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