As we near the 2020 presidential election, I can’t help but feel a need to prepare myself, in any way possible, for an inevitable outcome of despair and a distrust in American politics. Knowing that our only options are Biden and Trump, my own hope for a candidate that actually views me and my identity as a priority in this country has already been thrown out the window. I have already faced the reality that, in this election, the policies that can effectively reform political and economic systems that thrive off segregation and a marginalization of the poor are not of importance in relation to the louder demands of the silent white “majority” in America. I have already come to understand that the Democrat party will bravely leech off the votes of progressive Black and brown bodies but not seriously adhere to our policy.
In Biden’s consistent claims that HE is the face of the Democrat party, and that he decides “our” agenda, it is evident that he represents a white version of liberal thought. It is clear that the left-leaning policies he seeks to represent are ones that actively silences Black and brown voices to allow room for white centrists. It is even more abundantly clear that we have entered a time in which this quieting of Black and brown progressive policy is widely accepted to defeat this greater foe of Trump. While I, too, desperately wish for Trump and his entire administration to suffer the grave consequences they must face for the grievances they have caused minorities, domestically and abroad, it is this exact situation that is so striking to me as evidence of true democratic decay. It is this “lesser of two evils” that so clearly paints the picture of an American democracy that is not representative, is not fair, and is not concerned with achieving justice for those who have been screaming for it for decades.
As we are about to face the very real results of this election, whichever way it sways, we all must prepare ourselves to arm against an adversity that has been growing in this administration. We must become focused on community-building and engagement and divest from the notions that our federal government is thoughtful of the issues and concerns of marginalized communities. If we seek to see the people in our neighborhoods be lifted from incarceration, homelessness, addictions and more of the long list of the enforced determinants of poverty, we must be willing to actively engage with them and uplift them ourselves. We must focus on building intra-community relations in which people are not divided so neatly by class and materialism, but are equated by the fact that they exist besides us.
If we have been aware of anything throughout the past seven months of dealing with a pandemic on top of the social ailments of being a person without heightened privileges, it is that we depend on the awareness and aid of others. We exist and thrive only due to the support of those before and around us that are willing to provide it. Consequently, in the face of an administration that either is actively seeking to marginalize us or an administration that is willing to silence us, we must be even further strengthened in the knowledge that we are the people, and we, collectively, hold the power to protect and enhance our communities through a simultaneous dismantling of this current American obsession with a capitalist-controlled democracy. As many seek to bring down Trump and his “Trumpian” Republican administration, let it be reminded that the atrocities that have been normalized has simmered down the progressiveness of what Biden and his version of the Democrat party seeks to be, in which it is imperative that we demand a complete and utter reform of a system that has allowed for such a president and administration to carry out and spew such hatred as it has, lest we continue to further demoralize our own values without realization.
