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| Obama giving a campaign speech, years ago. Image source. |
I want to tell you a little story, about a presidential election a while back. I grew up evangelical and conservative, but at the time of our story, I had begun to identify as a feminist. I thought to myself, it's not good to automatically vote for someone just because of their political party; we need to do our research into the nuances of both candidates' positions. (And no, I no longer agree with this "I'm superior because I take a balanced view somewhere in the middle" philosophy. But that's a whole separate topic.) I followed the campaigns, watched the debates, and I felt that I agreed more with Obama's platform.
So there I am one day, filling out my absentee ballot, getting ready to mail it in. This was when I was in college, in a different state than where I grew up, so that's why I was voting by absentee. For the "president" column, I picked Obama, but then there were a bunch of other columns. Local elections. A few of the names I recognized, just because they were the incumbent politicians I'd always heard about in the news growing up, but I really knew nothing about what actual policies they supported. No idea which local candidates had views closest to mine. What to do, what to do.
I thought to myself, well, in general, I am conservative. I don't really know who these candidates are or what they stand for, but they're Republican so they should be okay. So I went ahead and voted straight-ticket Republican, with the exception of Obama for president.
A long time later, I realized, actually I'm not conservative. Whoops.
See, my perspective had changed so much. I had started reading some feminist blogs, and it gave me a whole new language to talk about the structure of society, the power dynamics between different demographic groups. I learned about systemic injustice for the first time. Learned so many new things about the reality of being poor or a minority in America, and of course that influenced my political views. And I found I was closer to Obama than his Republican challenger- but I chalked it up to "it's not good to have blind loyalty to one party- we have to look at each candidate as a nuanced individual" whereas the reality was "I'm not Republican any more."
I had never really been taught, in an unbiased way, what the general ideologies of the Democrat and Republican parties were. It was always this subtle, indirect message (from my parents, mostly) "Republicans are good, Democrats are bad". To expand on that, if I had been forced to try to put it into words back then, it was like, Republican policies are a reasonable and intelligent way to run a society, while Democrats are short-sighted and irresponsible, always wanting to throw money at people just because they whine about "it's not fair!" Like, geez look how unreasonable Democrats are, wanting to raise the minimum wage just because people are like "oh woe is me, I can't raise a family on my minimum wage income" and Democrats are all like "oh so sad, we need to help them! we need to give them money" but COME ON, you can't run a society that way. Adding more and more government programs just because some people are irresponsible and didn't go to college and get a decent job before they started having babies, LIKE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO. How can we run a society that way, constantly giving free handouts to people who aren't living their lives the right way? You're encouraging bad behavior, and also taking money away from the people who actually work hard and made responsible choices. Yeah sure, we feel bad for that single mom working at McDonald's, but you have to make laws that make sense and benefit society overall.
(Remember when that video leaked, of Romney saying that 47% of Americans are takers who just want the government to give them free stuff, and people were OUTRAGED? I was a little confused, because that's literally what I was taught. We didn't necessarily say it out loud, but yes, that's what I was taught.)
Then I learned about systemic injustice. I learned about how society depends on minimum-wage workers, and in reality a lot of those jobs are done by actual adults with families to support- it's not high school kids just getting some extra money to play around with, like my parents told me it's "supposed to" be. I learned that for people less privileged than me, it's very difficult for them to go to college. I learned that there have been some examples of cities that have raised the minimum wage and nothing bad happened; turned out it wasn't disastrous for the economy at all.
I learned all those things, and I changed my political views accordingly, and I still thought I was a Republican. Because, well, Republicans are the party of being reasonable and making policies that treat everyone fairly and benefit society overall, right? Whereas Democrats are the party of being short-sighted and irresponsible.
I remember back then I heard someone describe me as "super-liberal feminist" and I was very surprised. I really thought I was conservative. I really thought "liberal" was bad- that's how I'd always heard it used, as if it was a synonym for "evil."
Basically, I changed because I realized my past views were based on incorrect beliefs about reality. I truly wanted to treat everyone fairly, and when I was conservative, I truly thought conservative policies were the best way to do that. But then I learned more, and discovered that these other policies made more sense. Didn't realize they weren't conservative policies. Didn't realize they were the exact opposite. I still trusted that conservatives were reasonable, and once they learned the things I had learned, they would surely support those policies too. To keep going with my minimum-wage example: They would surely agree that we need to raise the minimum wage. Right?
And now I'm at the point where... I don't know what to think about full-grown adults that vote Republican. Do they just not know about systemic inequality? Do they just not know about privilege? Do they just not know about racism? Or do they know, but they vote for the policies that benefit themselves while unjustly keeping others in poverty?
Is it ignorance, or is it something much more evil?
People told me that black people mostly vote Democrat because Democrats promise to give them all kinds of free benefits. And wow isn't that just wrong, how they're enticed by things that will just benefit themselves, rather than looking at the big picture of how a functional society should work. Well, I can't believe it's taken me this long, but I've realized that upperclass white people vote Republican just because of the benefits to themselves- not looking at the big picture of what makes a fair and just society for everyone.
I'm proud to say I voted for Obama back then. And unfortunately I also voted for some Republicans because I innocently believed the Republican party truly wanted to create a functional society that is fair to everyone.
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