On Monday, the Democratic National Convention held its first of four digital events. Although the convention took place entirely online and most of the participants contributed from their homes or offices through pre-recorded videos, the resounding message remained the same: Democrats, old and new, urged us to elect Joe Biden for President.
As an advocate for getting President Trump out of office, I am unequivocally committed to voting for Biden and Harris this November. However, as a young voter, I also believe it is important to critique the tactics of politicians who could very well be leading our nation next year. Namely, the widespread tokenization of people of color has made me feel deeply uncomfortable about the state of our political discourse.
It was only months ago that reports of George Floyd’s death after the murders of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery shook the nation. At the forefront of his campaign, Joe Biden has addressed the issue of systemic racism and police brutality head-on simply because it is an issue that his party cannot afford to ignore. At some point, however, boundaries must be established.
George Floyd’s death is still fresh. If the nation is still in mourning and trying to make sense of the senseless murders of innocent Black people, why request that Floyd’s family- real people who lost their brother, husband, father, and son- speak at a political convention? Their very lives are a legacy of the racial injustice and brutality that killed one of their own.
I am concerned about a leadership that genuinely believed that having Floyd’s loved ones sit in front of a camera and request change by recounting George’s death was necessary. Black pain is not a political strategy and Black victims are not pawns in a culture war. I am troubled by a leadership that believes that minorities need to articulate time and again the daily injustices and violence they face even though these have been well documented for centuries. It is playing into the same game that keeps telling us that our right to live is a partisan issue or that our deaths our only tragic when they receive white sympathy and white votes. I worry that, inadvertently, the DNC is sending the wrong message: George Floyd wouldn’t have died if Joe Biden was president. The painful truth is that the systems that keep killing us run much deeper than a single person or political party. The truth is that Black people will continue to die even if Joe Biden is elected.
I understand that issues like police brutality cannot be tackled in one day and that the Biden campaign is already doing much more than the Trump administration by simply speaking about Black Lives Matter. But we should not get distracted by the aesthetics of a colorful campaign. It’s our responsibility to hold Biden and his administration accountable for their words and actions. If they decide to use Black suffering as a campaign tactic, so be it. But let them not forget once they are in office how they got there and who got them there.
While I condemn the tokenization of Black pain, I can understand the value of having relatives of victims speak during such a contentious time. Nonetheless, I sincerely hope that our culture will soon progress past the need to display Black trauma for politics and that all Americans, regardless of their political affiliation, will see the value in our humanity.
In the end, no one articulated the truth of the moment better than former First Lady Michelle Obama, who spoke at the end of Monday’s convention.
“Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country,” she said. “He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment.”
I hope that, once in office, Biden and his people will meet the moment and see that Black people are people; not concepts or ideas who exist to fulfill a larger plan.
