Why I Will Be Voting Today

It was a long time ago. I was ten or eleven, I think, watching the news with my dad. I dimly recall my confusion at the black and white images, wondering what could be wrong. As kids we had often played on the lawn during hot summers. Garden hoses meant fun.

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My dad explained. What we were seeing on the television were fire hoses. The pressure was strong enough to strip the bark off trees. We watched while people took cover or shielded each other.

Respecting the rights of black people was controversial in those days. The reaction of many white people was violent. Others were merely self-righteous. Even more were quietly hostile.

I don’t remember actually seeing Martin Luther King talk of his dream on television. I have no direct recall of President Kennedy’s Civil Rights speech. My memory of those days has grown dim. Perhaps it is because my understanding during that time was dim. Overt racism was in full view, on our television sets, in those days.

There was a lot we didn’t see. The evil of slavery was obvious, even to a child. But slavery was often explained as a part of distant history. Childhood doesn’t last forever, and some education does intrude.

Not all education is book-learning, as my father told me. Life has taught me a little about injustice.

Countless discussions with neighbors, acquaintances, and relatives have taught me about the limitless number rationalizations that humanity can come up with when pressed. Those same discussions have taught me about humanity’s great capacity for understanding and self-sacrifice.

The years before gay rights became an issue tell me how easy it is to grow up despising a group of people without ever giving it a thought. The witness of my generation to the long, long arc of the moral universe has taught me that hope suffers many defeats but sometimes sweeps away mighty walls.

Worship has taught me about salvation, redemption, and belief. I have also learned about self-righteousness and intolerance. But fellow worshipers have taught me about conscience and the translation of faith into social action.

I have discovered, through introspection and my relationships with others, that most people have a low tolerance for injustice. When we encounter the unfairness of life, in little ways and great, humankind faces a great divide.

The hatred of injustice causes much of humanity to deny that it exists. Rationalization often involves more than simple inaction. Victims of injustice are sometimes victimized again in calloused attitudes. Those who face obstacles not encountered by others are held responsible. Historically oppressed minorities are sometimes told they are less than completely human, or that they invite an unfairly tilted playing field. When privilege is eventually threatened, our resentment flows like water from one generation to another. We cheer for the giant who beats the little guy into submission.

But much of humanity recognizes the injustice that stares back at us. The immigrant that is subjected to derision may remind us of our own experiences, or that of our parents or grandparents. We may not have experienced poverty, but we can attempt an empathy with those who struggle to escape its grasp. Those who have never been part of an historically oppressed minority have no way to know what is faced, but we have enough imagination to recognize that it is wrong.

We know that subjecting the little guy to the mercies of the selfish and powerful is evil in motion.

Just as willful ignorance prompts denial and perpetuation, recognition prompts us to action.

That is why I am a Democrat.
That is why I will be voting today.

This article is a collaboration between MadMikesAmerica and FairandUnbalanced.com.

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