As a black gay man living in 21st Century America, I find I’m more than a little disturbed to find that I am not FREE to choose the party I vote for without stern recrimination from my own people.
That’s right, you see I voted for Donald Trump.
For background, I’m 59 and have never voted before because I never had the sense that who the president is really mattered to my day-to-day.
So I never voted.
Until this year.
For Trump.
Why, you may ask?
Because he was the underdog who was being bullied by seemingly all of society, and i couldn’t understand why.
You wouldn’t think that would be such a big deal, it’s just one vote. What’s the harm, there are 2 parties for 2 reasons: freedom of choice and differences of opinion. Both very American things, but they cost me the love and respect of all my family and friends!
Apparently if your skin is the same color as mine, you have to vote for Democrats — even while knowing that they’ve never done anything to enhance your socio-economic profile and never will.
Even while not seeing anything in their campaign that you would vote for AS A THINKING VOTER.
Even while believing their candidate is senile and his running mate lies ABOUT EVERYTHING she says.
In other words, being Black requires me to vote for maybe the only 2 people I would NEVER VOTE FOR IN A MILLION YEARS!
Joe Biden himself said it: “If you don’t vote for me, you ain’t BLACK”.
Chelsea Handler reaffirmed that vulgar and insulting sentiment when she chose to remind rapper/producer 50 Cent that he was too black to vote for Trump.
In recent years I’ve come to call this thinking “blackmindedness” because it is unique to the Black community and is specifically only beneficial to black people. For instance, it is a REQUIREMENT of the black community that I hate Donald Trump. Why? Because “he’s a racist” and I am black. No logic required. Nevermind that his presidency or his alleged racism hasn’t harmed me or been experienced by me in any way. I’m just supposed to take my “tribe’s” word for it.
How did we as a people get here? How did we become a people who don’t appreciate independent thought, diversity of opinion, or have tolerance for the views of others?
American sports journalist Jason Whitlock writes:
“American bigots established black skin as the defining characteristic of black people and that 400 years later, the ideological descendants of those bigots have worked to maintain skin color as the defining characteristic of black people. This year those ideological descendants decided to capitalize the “b” in Black as a written reminder that skin color places black people in a special category of humanity.”
That category is VICTIM OF SOCIETY.
This designation causes black people into seeing each day as a struggle to prove their blackness rather than a competition to prove their intelligence, religious faith, patriotism, commitment to family or integrity. Whitlock calls it the ‘Unapologetically Black Olympics’, and the Olympic organizers are white liberals or more largely black race traders/traitors like Joy Reid and Don Lemon who, even as they enjoy wealth and celebrity most of us will never know, come into our homes nightly with the message that “America is racist, you are its victim, and it’s Donald Trump’s fault!”
I didn’t know that because I don’t watch CNN or MSNBC, so I formed my own opinions — which went entirely against that narrative — and here I am: an outcast, a pariah.
Obviously I take no pride in being part of identity groups that don’t allow freedom of speech and thought, and that are intolerant of diverse opinions. I’m an individual with one brain, one voice, and one vote. And if this is still America, that spirit should be celebrated, not condemned.
So here’s the thing: why would a people who had to flee and fight slavery to gain their rights, deprive me of my right to think differently from them? Why can’t I vote for whomever I want in 2020 America?
