As I'm sure many have heard, probably too much by now, Alabama recently elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate. Democrat Doug Jones narrowly defeated the highly controversial Republican Roy Moore in a nail-biting special election to fill the seat left open by now Attorney General of the United States Jeff Sessions. Again, as I'm sure most know, Alabama is a highly reliable conservative state. Democrats usually do so poorly that few even bother to run outside of African American majority communities, the most populous demographic for Democrats in the South.
This brings me to my point: much has been made about how people of color basically won this election for Doug Jones; without them, we would be stuck with a credibly accused pedophile who has a penchant for defying the rule of law for the sake of his personal opinions about religion that are often racist, queerphobic, and generally rude and offensive to basically everyone who isn't a straight white cisgender male. In reality, this is essentially how it is nationwide. The Democratic Party's largest and most reliable coalition is minorities, and yet, they have little to show for their loyalty and prescient activism.
Make no mistake, while minority voters indeed have a sense of love and loyalty for the country and make such prudent voting and activism decisions because they want to make the world a better place for all, their survival depends on it. The United States does the bare minimum for people of color. We think it is enough that we established legally that people should not be considered property, that people of color deserve the same opportunities from the same people and places as white people, and that brown people's religions are both valuable and compatible with American values. That isn't enough. Just because our laws say so does not mean the people are as valiant. There is still a subset of the population that believe in white primary values. People of color are still punished by the institutions that protect white people, and these institutions are not always vestiges of old ways of thinking. Police violence against people of color and the concerted effort to deprive minorities of voting rights are alive, well, and becoming as creative as they are blatant.
I am probably as white as they come. I don't feel nor can I ever feel these effects the way people of color do, but it is very obvious to me that these effects are real and incredibly harmful. The Democratic party has made a point to market itself as an open and inclusive political forum, but we have yet to prove that to be true. The most we have done is show that while we welcome people of color to vote for us, we aren't as willing to stick our necks out for them or make their lives easier or better. People of color have saved the United States from a great danger in Roy Moore. Let's start doing something for them and their livelihood so they don't have to worry about men like Roy Moore ever again.
