For my entire life, I have had this bragging right, this achievement made purely out of luck that set me apart from most of my classmates. As one of the oldest in my graduating class, having turned 18 on October 10th of this year, I was able to vote. Ever since I figured this out in 6th grade, I told everyone who would listen.
The time finally came in June. I was so excited. When I voted in the primary, I expected to feel accomplished and feel heard. Instead, I felt hopeless. I voted for Elizabeth Warren, but by the Maryland primary date she had already dropped out. In fact, everyone but Joe Biden had dropped out. When I walked up to the dropbox in June, wearing a mask, in with an Elizabeth Warren bubble filled on my ballot, I felt hopeless. I felt like my voice couldn’t have mattered any less. I went home and I scream cried into my pillow. The system is broken. The system was designed broken. The forty-eight senators who voted against Amy Coney Barrett’s supreme court nomination represent 13.5 million more people than the 52 senators who voted to confirm. With Barrett on the Supreme Court, ⅚ of the conservative supreme court justices will have been appointed by GOP presidents who lost the popular vote and confirmed by senators who represent a minority of Americans. Hence, the screaming into the pillow. Everyone yells from the top of their lungs how important voting is. Every day I open Instagram and it tells me to make a plan to vote. Every day I open Twitter and it tells me how important my voice is. But when I actually cast that ballot, I didn’t feel very important. In the first week of October, I dropped my mail-in ballot for the election in the drop box at my high school. It was the first time I had been back to school since March. And I was there trying to defend human rights for me and millions of others in the United States. It felt a lot more powerful at that time. Though, behind that power, the despair still lingered. I knew that my vote for Biden in Maryland wouldn’t really have an effect. I knew that ultimately, the next President would be decided by the opinions of people in Florida and Ohio, and Pennsylvania. But here, now, watching record-breaking youth turn-out in early voting across the country, I can’t help but feel proud. I can’t help but feel like my voice is being heard. I can’t help but feel like I am taking control. The system is broken and it doesn’t represent the people. But I think to fix the system you have to take it down from the inside. So vote. Vote because it’s miserable. Vote because you feel hopeless at the polls. Vote because there is no one who represents you. Vote to change the system. Vote for your future. Fear of the Unknown
You’re right. I am afraid. Not necessarily afraid of learning the atrocities of this world, but afraid that I’ll find out I’ve been complicit. Afraid I’ve been helping the hate without even knowing it. Afraid I’ve been nothing more than an insignificant, ignorant, instrument in a society that has hated people of color since before it was born. So I speak. I scream at the top of my lungs that Black Lives Matter. That climate change will disproportionately affect people of color. That school segregation in Howard County is a reality. That the police system needs to be reformed and defunded. That violations of human rights should not go ignored. But it isn’t enough. It’s not enough to be just active. I have to educate. You’re right. I am afraid. And so is everyone else. People are afraid of education and learning and the unknown. But more than that, people are afraid of what happens if they don’t learn. Ignorance is bliss, but being nosy is human nature. And so people research and learn. And as a white person of privilege, it is my job to educate my white friends and family. My job to stand with people of color and lift their voices up. Because in the end, I’d rather lose a couple of white friends than aid in the murder of my friends of color. “There comes a time when silence is betrayal”
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