DEFINITELY NOT A BLANK CHECK
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
— Langston Hughes, Afro-American poet
November 21, 2020. They were long and combative months. It was known in advance that November 3 elections were going to be tortuous. They were like none in the years of our life. A campaign in which the absurd fear (absurd as disproportionate) was sown of not turning the United States into a Venezuela or a Cuba. A campaign of false accusations and conspiracies in the midst of a pandemic in which hundred of thousands people have died so far in this country (and hundreds of thousands more in other countries that have followed the denialist and arrogant practices of this administration, such as Brazil and Mexico, to speak only of our continent). The candidate who should win won to stop, even if it is for a while longer, the implacable supremacist agenda of millions of people who deny the human condition to millions of other people who also inhabit this country.
The Biden / Harris victory must have been overwhelming. A strong rejection of the racist and criminal discourse and practices of this government. But the victory was not overwhelming. That more than 74 million people have voted in favor of four more years of this government is only evidence that supremacist racism will remain latent against ethnic and racial minorities in this nation, as it has been for four hundred years. For their part, the more than 81 million who voted for Biden / Harris are just a confirmation that this part of the other voters wanted to maintain the status quo where everything changes to remain the same; others to be able to breathe for a while longer; others, because of the illusion of seeing a woman occupy the vice presidency for the first time and the impulse of actions for social justice; and others simply because there was no other option. In any case, if there is one thing that stands out right now, it is that the Biden / Harris victory is mainly due to the vote of Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans.
Juan Andrade Jr., of the United States Hispanic Leadership Institute, says: “Two undeniable truths emerged in this presidential election. The first is that there are two large voting blocs in the United States: black and white. Both groups participated in exceptionally large numbers in the 2020 elections. The second is that Hispanics are the third largest voting bloc, and neither whites nor blacks can elect any president without the support of Hispanics. ”(1) . Obviously, this equation could have changed if all Latinos with the ability to vote had done so. Latinos already have the numbers to be the second electoral force in the country. Although this was the time in history that more Latino voters participated, we still need to continue to push for a massive vote in upcoming elections. Puerto Rican journalist Juan González, author of Harvest of Empire and professor of communications and public policy at Rutgers University, indicates that “Twenty million six hundred thousand Latinos went to the polls in this election, 64% of the 32 million Latinos eligible to vote, while in previous elections the turnout has almost always been less than 50%. In crude figures, 8 million more Latinos voted than in 2016. That is, a 63% increase in relation to the last presidential elections” (2).
Added to these data, we must mention the significant vote of the indigenous population. Particularly moving is the history of the Navajo of Arizona, a state that had maintained a Republican majority for the past two decades. On this occasion, 60-90% of the 67,000 eligible Navajo voters voted for Biden / Harris and were instrumental in bringing victory to the Democratic candidates. One of the great obstacles for the Navajo, as for the other 562 tribes, which number more than 5.2 million people, has been the fact that they do not have a postal address, which is a requirement to be able to vote. This requirement is one of the strategies of the political system to suppress the vote of the natives, a strategy that also includes the criminalization and mass incarceration of Blacks, Latinos and indigenous people, which means that people who are in jail do not have the right to vote in most states. In eleven states, those who have committed certain crimes and served sentences cannot vote indefinitely and often for life (3). This year, Allie Young, a 30-year-old Navajo, in coordination with Google, launched a campaign to give a mailing address to more than 4,000 young people of voting age and mobilized thousands to ride horseback for ten miles to polling stations, helping to ensure Democratic victory in the state (4). The fourth numerically significant group are Asian Americans, who today comprise more than 20 million, of which 11 million are eligible to vote. According to the data available to date, 67% of the counted vote of this group was for the Democratic formula.
The electoral victory of Biden / Harris is thus a victory committed at least with these four sectors that represent 40% of the total population together with other minority sectors. Biden / Harris are a political duo who don’t necessarily have the best record for past actions with minorities: Joe Biden for opposing the use of buses to take black children to predominantly white schools as a means of promoting equal opportunity; and a 1994 criminal law that ended up seriously affecting Black and Latino people. Kamala Harris for her record as California Attorney General in the 1990s, implementing laws that led to the disproportionate incarceration of Blacks in that state. The two have won the elections on the promise of helping to build a better present and future for these populations. But voters have an eye on their decisions and actions, in a country where there is an unprecedented interest in what the rulers do. As if their life depended on it. Because it is exactly that.
Biden presents himself as the unifier of a country that has never been divided, simply because it has never been a unit. What has happened in these past four years is that the country and the world have been able to see, in full deployment and at the tip of tweets and executive orders, the inequalities and divisions that have existed since their origins, based on a tacit and explicit concept of racial superiority and origin. The resistance of the naked king to abandon the throne is the perfect symbol, for the extreme and carnivalesque, of this assumed arrogance. But he will have to go whether he wants to or not. Meanwhile, many of those who voted for Biden / Harris look, among other things, for social justice and reparation. For a place at the table of discussions and decisions. For a scientific and concerted plan to control the pandemic at the national level. For a demand for their rights to affordable housing, sanitation, equal access to education, environmental protection policies, an immigration reform in favor of DACA and asylum for migrants at the border with Mexico. For a dismantling of most of Trump’s 200 executive orders. And none of these demands is requested as a favor but rather as a right. How it should be required to ask for forgiveness for the historical genocide against indigenous peoples, for slavery and oppression against Blacks throughout 400 years, for the oppression and cornering suffered by the Latino population that has been in this country at least one hundred years before the English, and speaking in Spanish. For the moral, economic, social and political reparation of these and other populations that have historically been victimized. As the chorus of Langston Hughes' poem repeats, For I’se still goin’, honey, / I’se still climbin’, / And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
Works cited
1) Andrade Jr., Juan. “Latinos Put Biden Over the Top”. United States Hispanic Leadership Institute. Nov 12, 2020. https://www.ushli.org/
2 ) González, Juan. “Los grandes medios se equivocan, la participación récord de la gente latina favoreció a Biden y el voto de la gente blanca lo perjudicó”. Democracy Now!. 13 de noviembre, 2020. https://www.democracynow.org/es
3) “Restoration of Voting Rights for Felons”. National Conference of State Legislatures. 10/1/2020. https://www.ncsl.org/
4) Saxena, Kalyani. “How The Navajo Nation Helped Flip Arizona For Democrats”. November 13, 2020. npr.org
Vindictas. Cuentistas latinoamericanas. I want to recommend this absolute novelty of the UNAM within the series of novels and short stories written by women from different Latin American countries during the 20th century. Its publication responds to the need to make visible writers who were denied the literary space not only in the canon but in its very presence on the cultural scene. An invitation to get closer to writers whose work we should have known for a long time.