Op-Ed
OP-ED: African Americans, Terrorism and the Vote
SAN DIEGO VOICE — African Americans should not be surprised at the recent outburst of violence both in terms of bombs sent through the mail and the needless death of more innocent people.
By Dr. John Warren, Publisher
African Americans should not be surprised at the recent outburst of violence both in terms of bombs sent through the mail and the needless death of more innocent people. Whether it was the nine worshipers in a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina engaged in worship, the Sunday worshipers in Texas, and now Jewish worshipers in Pittsburgh. These events are reminders of what Black people have dealt with for over 100 years. The difference is now others are experiencing the hatred and violence that never went away.
African Americans need to return to our historic posture of achieving and surviving “in spite of” and not being defeated “because of.” We must become more aware of others as well as ourselves. This is important because the very people being targeted so often will look like the attackers. In other words, the victims, from what we have seen so far, can be any ethnicity. There are black jews as well as white jews, and terrorists, outside of the religious attacks, are more concerned about the location of their targets than they are about the ethnicity of their targets. Be it a mall, a school, or a theater, terrorists don’t care about the makeup of their targets. They care about the volume of people they harm.
We must not allow terrorism to become another tool of voter suppression. We must get out the vote no matter what the emergencies, if there are any on November 6th. Our votes are more important on November 6th than all the protests we have had since the President was elected. We must remember that protest without a vote equals no change and change we must have with this midterm election.
Let’s return to helping others get to the polls as well as voting ourselves.
This article originally appeared in the San Diego Voice.
