What to Me is Election Day 2012?

What to Me is Election Day 2012?

by Lisa Guerrero | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)

I remember the overwhelming excitement and feeling of sanctified purpose that the 2008 election had.  I, like all other Obama supporters in 2008, was swept up in the historical meaning of his potential win.  And when he did win, it felt like both the inevitable and astonishing event that it was.  Yes We Can.  Of course, his win didn’t bring with it the end of racism and the significance of race, no matter how many people naively, ignorantly, or deliberately clung, (and still cling) to the notion that an Obama presidency equaled a “post-racial” nation.  Neither did his election to the White House transform Barack Obama into the superhero we all desperately wanted him to be.  He remained a man; one who has had remarkable moments as Commander-in-Chief, and has also had regrettable moments as Commander-in-Chief.  He is fallible and flawed, as all humans are, but our disappointments in him seem to resonate much deeper because of the unprecedented hope he and his campaign allowed us to indulge in a manner that many of us had not dared to imagine before. 

It is four years later, and though I haven’t bought multiple t-shirts to commemorate it this time, I still have hope…in him, in my fellow citizens, and in my vote.  I still, and always will feel, that my vote is a profound privilege and responsibility.

This has been a long, arduous election season; the most taxing one I’ve experienced since I have been old enough to vote.  And throughout this seemingly endless election season there's been a lot of talk about how there isn't the same enthusiasm, the same "being on the cusp of history" feeling for people, especially those who supported Obama in 2008. And that is certainly true.  But elections like that come around once in a lifetime…if you’re lucky.  And while I am happy to have been a part of that rare moment four years ago, for me, and many others, this election in 2012 is more important in many ways than the historic election in 2008.

To me this election is about women's equality, my equality; it is about keeping safe women's ability, my ability, to be able to give voice to our experiences, to determine what we do with our own bodies, and to have access to safe and affordable healthcare when we make those choices; it is about affordable healthcare for everyone; it is about supporting the right for people to love whoever they want, and to have that love be recognized as "valid" and "equal," as if those words should ever have anything to do with love; it is about saving, improving, and believing in the promise of exemplary public education and future generations' chances at having access to it; it is about taking climate change seriously; it is about being our brothers’ and our sisters’ keepers. It's about the people I love…my grandmother, my disabled mother, my friends whose weddings I want to attend, my fellow teachers who are constantly being told to bail out the ocean with a teaspoon, my students who are given less and less each year while paying more and more, my goddaughter, my best friends, and the people who struggle to live a good life amidst daily challenges whose names I will never know.  All of that is worth my vote.

My vote also says, “Obama, you must do more.” Drones, immigration, mandatory minimums, mass incarceration, gun violence, voter suppression, systemic poverty.  “You can do better.  We want you to do better….we alldeserve better.”

But even if I didn't care about any of these things I would vote anyway...because while I recognize many things in our system are flawed, and will likely continue to be flawed after this and many other elections, I’m not convinced that the flaw is yet fatal.  Who am I, in all of my privilege, to stop believing, when so many with so fewer reasons to believe than I, did not stop, have not stopped?   People have fought, been jailed and beaten, died, and still die, for the singular right to check a box and say: "My voice counts too;" their battles mean that I am lucky enough today to sit in the comfort of my house, unmolested, unchallenged, fill out a ballot, and drop it in a mailbox, even as people are still being suppressed TODAY just for trying to exercise this singular right. 

As James Baldwin once said, “Words like ‘freedom,’ ‘justice,’ ‘democracy’ are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.”Part of that individual effort is to vote. I will alwaysvote because my vote is not mine alone, but also belongs to those I love, to those who need help, to those who, like me, still have faith that we can love our neighbors like we love ourselves. I will always vote because it is the very least I can do to say thank you to those who came before me losing battles and winning wars, and those who continue to fight many of those same battles today both here and around the world.  I will always vote because it is also the most I can do to say I will always believe we can be better tomorrow than we are today.  Yes We Can…be bold. Be hopeful.  Be unwilling to give up fighting for change.  I’m one voice among many, and I approve this message.

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Lisa Guerrero is Associate Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University Pullman, editor of Teaching Race in the 21st Century: College Professors Talk About Their Fears, Risks, and Rewards (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and author of  the forthcoming Satiric Subjectivities: Double Conscious Satire in Contemporary Black Culture (Temple University Press).