My earliest memory of the U.S. electoral process was the 2000 presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore. My family had only immigrated to the United States two years prior to the election, and although my parents could not vote, they were steadfast Democrats. They idolized Bill Clinton for it was his promises of prosperity and social security that led them to immigrate to America.
I became a U.S. citizen in 2014, and this is the first time I have an opportunity to vote in a presidential election. So, when my family gathered for dinner last week, the conversation naturally drifted to my vote. My parents railed against Donald Trump and trumpeted (no pun intended) Hillary Clinton, while I shrugged in frustration and exhaustion.
This election has exposed to me the extent to which racial and economic justice is undermined and threatened by the binary politics of America. Whether white progressivism or conservatism, political institutions in America operate within the same framework of whiteness that oppresses and exploits Black and Brown people in America and the global south.
When we consider the frontrunners for the party nominations, this becomes all too apparent.
Trump is a white supremacist, yet the reality is that Trump’s antics have only exposed the underlying nativism, Islamophobia and anti-Blackness of the Republican Party.
What I find far more incriminating, however, is the anti-Blackness of white, corporate feminist Clinton. In the 1990s, she lobbied to expand the policing and criminalization of Black people, and her sincerity on racial issues is still questionable today. Just two weeks ago, activist Ashley Williams confronted Clinton about her role in mass incarceration. As Ashley was escorted away, Clinton retorted, “OK, back to the issues.”
Clinton also embraces imperialistic policies that displace, surveil and exploit communities abroad. As Secretary of State, for example, she backed the Honduran coup that ousted the democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya and led to the assassination of political dissidents, such as indigenous rights activist Berta Caceres.
Even Sen. Bernie Sanders, the supposedly “radical” liberal outsider, regularly equates Blackness to poorness and reduces racism to a symptom of economic inequality.
Racial and economic justice, globally and domestically, are so often reduced to liberal causes when in reality they are threatened by a binary political establishment that pursues order over justice. For Black and Brown people marginalized by institutional white supremacy, justice exists and operates outside of the “democratic” institutions that historically and presently question and temper the relevancy and urgency of our salvation.
