There are many issues with which I still can find no common ground with either party. There are many other issues as well that neither party adequately and responsibly handle, but there is one issue that I simply could not ignore anymore: racism.
Since 1972, I have always voted either for the Democratic candidate or my sister Susan. It didn’t matter what election was on the line, the warmongering, pro-rich, environmentally clueless, elitist Republicans were just too much for me to tolerate. However, by 2016 I had lost faith in the Democrats, but remained unable to vote for the Republicans. I genuinely believed it immoral to for me to do so. If only Susan had won those 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, we would all be so better off! But here it is 2021, and the Virginia governor race compelled me to do what I could never bring myself to do in nearly half a century: Vote Republican.
There are many issues with which I still can find no common ground with either party. On immigration, the Republicans are too cold-hearted and the Democrats too irresponsible. On war-mongering, the Republicans too often want to remake the world in our image while the Democrats (almost as bad) keep wanting to save the world. On fiscal discipline and burgeoning budgets, both parties have shown a shameless hypocrisy that should embarrass us all. I’m still not sure which is worse: the tax-and-spend Democrats or the spend-and-don’t-tax Republicans. There are many other issues as well that neither party adequately and responsibly handle, but there is one issue that I simply could not ignore anymore: racism.
Since my earliest days of political awakening, watching Martin Luther King speak during the great March on Washington in 1963 when I was only 11 years old, I have believed that countering racism is the most crucial, most important issue facing our country. Sitting in front of my grandmother’s black-and-white television in her row house on the westside of New York City that hot, humid August day, I understood that we could only survive as a nation if we could come together as one nation, black and white (and all the other hues) of our unique country, founded on ideals and principles that placed our aspirations, if not yet our reality, way above those of every other country on earth. And it was clear to me at that time that it would be the Democrats who would lead us out of the fear and hatred and elitism of that time and inspire a new generation of Americans who would not judge each “by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
For decades, that seemed the truth. But no longer. Now it is the Democrats—far from all of them, but still far too many of them—who are the standard bearers of racism. There remain too great a number of hateful racists on the far Right, but the burgeoning number of clueless racists on the Left has become overwhelming and now pose a greater threat to our nation than those of the extreme Right. The Democrats as a party no longer embrace equality; instead, the party now substitutes the term equity. Equity—once not so long ago a word that conveyed a sense of fairness and compassion—has now been rendered a euphemism for racism, much like the term “states’ rights” was coopted by earlier racists to hide their racist intent. And certainly, equity as a means to level the playing field and ensure that a socially and economically disadvantaged individual is given a better chance is still laudable. But as a party the Democrats no longer believe in the individual, they no longer believe that everyone is equal and should be given an equal chance at success. I suspect that deep down that many of them no longer believe that minorities can really compete equally with whites (and increasingly with Asians). They will offer lots of excuses—broken families, poverty, poor school districts, violence, diversity—to justify their view, but they distressingly sound like the racists of long ago trying to justify segregation and apartheid.
To reiterate, any child who comes from a broken family or a poor neighborhood should be given additional benefits and consideration to level the playing field with the richer children who come from better school systems, but those are socio-economic considerations, not racial ones. Of course, poorer children cannot fairly compete against those who have lived lives of greater privilege. But the Democrats blur the lines and are unable to see the disturbing danger to our society when an upper-middle-class Hispanic or African-American student has an easier time getting into an Ivy League university than a lower-middle-class white or Asian student. Or when a less-qualified job applicant gets a job simply because the mindless mantra of diversity trumps all other considerations. Democrats used to believe fervently that race did not matter and that it was only the individual who mattered: that we were all equal under the law and that any idea or concept that threatened individual merit was anathema to the American way of life. But that sadly no longer is true. Far sadder is the truth that most Democrats who harbor these beliefs—again like old racists of yore—would vehemently deny that they are racists at all.
Decades ago, Ronald Reagan, a then-lifelong Democrat, declared that he never left the Democratic party, but that it had left him. At the time, I shook my head in disgust and concluded that Reagan had sold out to business interests and our increasingly bloated military-industrial complex. In truth, I still believe his departure from the Democrat party was premature. But now, when my political party of the last half-century has clearly thrown in its lot with the forces of racism against the individual, I grudgingly accept his view. Whether the Democrats left me or I left them, it doesn’t much matter. I still miss the old Democrats, like Martin Luther King and millions of others, who believed in the intrinsic and infinite worth of the individual over the group, but they too would be denounced by today’s Democratic Party. I’m a long way from ever embracing the Republicans; they still have too many political warts. True to form for both parties, I suspect that the Republicans will now take another lethal dose of hubris and triumphalism and alienate too many Americans who want something better from both political parties. But I’m not too concerned.
I can always vote again for my sister in 2024.
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