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JASMYNE CANNICK: About That Roll Call Vote and Hillary Clinton
It wasn't that long ago that Blacks were captured, enslaved, and brought to America.
For those Blacks that made it through the Middle Passage, the years that followed were filled with back breaking labor, misery, agony, and unspeakable mistreatment, including rape, torture, and death, all at the hands of their owners.
Then came the 13th Amendment, which was ratified in 1865 and abolished and prohibited slavery, followed by the 14th Amendment in 1868 which granted citizenship to all people "born or naturalized in the United States," and included the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. The 15th Amendment was supposed to end voting rights discrimination on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of slavery, but Southern Democratic legislators found other means to deny the vote to Blacks, through violence, intimidation, and Jim Crow laws. Enter the The National Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Signed into law by the same race responsible for the initial capture and enslavement of Blacks, we became emotionally attached to our victimizers and signed up in droves to join their Party while singing their praises and even defending our captors after we were freed.
That tradition of madness continues today.
But trust me when I tell you that I won't be joining in the chorus of Blacks praising Hillary Clinton for ending a roll call vote that shouldn't have been called in the first place had she conceded when it was clear she didn't have a chance in hell of getting the nomination.
That would put me in The Cabin and make me an Uncle Tom of sorts–one of those Black people whose political views and allegiances are detrimental to Blacks as a group.
We've already got too many of those as it is.
Just keeping it real.
At 30, Jasmyne Cannick is a critic and commentator based in Los Angeles who writes about the worlds of pop culture, race, class, sexuality, and politics as it relates to the African-American community. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times and Ebony Magazine. A regular contributor to NPR’s ‘News and Notes’ and UrbanThoughtCollective.com, she was chosen as one Essence Magazine’s 25 Women Shaping the World. She can be reached at www.jasmynecannick.com or www.myspace.com/jasmynecannick.
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