To be fair, this year’s election is the first where I’m capable of being relatively conscious of my political surroundings. When President Obama ran for his first term in office, I was seven– not anywhere close to understanding the impact of that election. Yes, I remembered my parent’s ‘Yes We Can’ shirts and TV snippets of this influential Black man wearing a clean suit and a trusting smile, but I still could not grasp why our community buzzed with hope and subtle excitement.
This year was a whole different story. At fifteen, I’m still not old enough to vote, yet I still found myself dragged into this political mess of an election. Our U. political system has never really attempted to hide its discrimination. We fussed over the ‘do-nothing-congress’ for about a month before we remembered that this type of treatment was expected when a Black man of power faces a brigade of old white men– then we forgot all about it and they continued to, well do nothing. Racism is rooted in the very seams of our countries, and it often makes no exception for the government. However, even this public discrimination seems to know its limits. They know to do just enough subtle acts to make an impression but at the same time avoid accountability. Apparently, Republican Candidate Donald Trump never got this particular memo.
During the primaries, Donald Trump was entertainment, we deemed him tomorrow’s problem. But when the impossible became plausible, Trump became terrifying. To have someone who represents each and every one of this country’s flaws successfully run a presidential campaign is scary. To have people support a future of hate and discrimination is even scarier. You expect more than slaps on the wrist to match your disapproval but, instead, you’re met with increasing polls and Republican nominations. You’re forced to listen to plans of a future controlled by people who systematically suppress to gain power and encouraged by those who hold a certain disdain for people of your color.
Being a double minority, I’ve been lectured about the power of my vote more than the average individual. My teacher tells me to vote for the sake of my gender, my mother tells me to vote for my Black ancestors who could not. But until this year, I always undermined its importance. To see what happens when millennials especially sit back and let the older generation handle politics is not the greatest experience. To see what happens when we let the same people who voted Trump into presidential candidacy take control of the political wheel isn’t too fun either. It’s funny until the joke becomes our reality and I for one would not like to wait until it gets to that point. For those who refuse to pick the ‘worst of two evils’, it’s time to grow up and realize that no vote is a vote in the wrong direction. People have put their lives on the line for the privilege of voting that we have today, so who are we to just refuse this gift? Our future is our own, and unfortunately, we are not going to like it very much if we continue to sit back and just “see what happens.”
