HYPOCRISY OF ‘WOKE’ AMERICANS WHO DON’T VOTE
There are some people in my family who do not vote. They are the descendants of a proud African-American family from Georgia, the grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of wise men and women who understood the power of the ballot box even when they were barred from the polls.
Perhaps no one should have been more disillusioned with politics than the people of my parents’ generation, born in the South a century ago. America was cruel to them, and politicians who could have helped did nothing but make it worse.
For that generation, though, voter apathy was not an option. Many African-Americans were willing to die rather than live without the right to vote.
When I was growing up, my father and mother never missed a chance to do their civic duty. On Election Day, at the end of my father’s shift at the Uniroyal factory, he would swing by the house to pick up my mother and, with my brother and me in the back seat, head uptown to vote.
Neither rain nor cold could keep them away. Too much was at stake, not so much for them anymore but for their children, their grandchildren and every Glanton child who followed.
My parents knew that their vote would determine how proudly we would be able to walk in the world long after they were gone. They would have no financial wealth to leave the generations to come, but they were determined to secure for us the hope of prosperity.
Voting was the only way they could ensure that their children could achieve goals much higher than any they could imagine for themselves, having been born to domestic workers and farmers. The ballot was an investment in a future where their offspring could chart their own course.
Somewhere down this spiraling road, some young adults in my family took a detour. They decided that their ambivalence about voting somehow makes them more “woke” than those who came before them.
So they ignored the lessons of the past and decided to make a dangerous U-turn. In the South, where they live, the Republican power structure has been more than willing to help push them further and further backward.
Right now in Georgia, voting rights advocacy groups charge that Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp, who is also the secretary of state, is systematically using his office to suppress minority votes that likely would benefit his opponent, Stacey Abrams, an African-American. Voting rights are again under siege, and some of my relatives don’t even care.
Instead of focusing on the many reasons they should participate in the upcoming midterm elections as well as the presidential election two years from now, some of my family insist on trying to explain why they won’t vote. Here are some of their excuses:
› “I don’t believe in politics.” In other words, they don’t believe that laws passed by politicians have any impact on their lives. Meanwhile, some with low-paying jobs are uninsured because politicians in Georgia chose not to accept federal funding to expand Medicaid that would make them eligible for Obamacare.
› “Politicians are going to do whatever they want anyway.” This kind of victim mentality keeps people struggling at the bottom. They don’t believe they have the power to change anything. So they abdicate their responsibility to others who are most likely to vote against their best interests. And their belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy — politicians get to do whatever they want because no one is holding them accountable.
› “I live in a red state. My vote doesn’t count.” Georgia is a red state because nonvoters have allowed it to remain a red state. All states have the potential to be an important swing state if people would just get out and vote.
› “Politicians are hypocrites.” Yes, some of them are but so are many people who don’t vote. They are all over social media talking about what they don’t like about government, leading friends to believe they are active participants in the electoral process when they are actually faking it.
In my opinion, if you don’t vote, you lose the right to complain.