by Mia McKenzie
The Democratic National Convention is underway, and my eye-sockets are already sore from all the eye-rolling. Last night, Michelle Obama spoke and my Facebook page was inundated with stuff like, “Michelle Obama is wearing that dress! Four more years! Four more years!” Wow. Really? Is that all it takes?
You can be sure that I have many things to say about President Obama and this government and this DNC and this election. But, honestly, I’m tired of this same old shit, so I’m not going to say any of it. If y’all want to, y’all can go read up elsewhere on the policies and practices of this administration. For my part, I will just post this quote from Malcolm X (from a video that my super smart friend Irina Contreras posted this morning as her own response to the Michelle Obama speech), from the Ballot or Bullet speech of 1964. It still applies.
“You’re the one who sent Kennedy to Washington. You’re the one who put the present democratic administration in Washington, D.C.. The whites were evenly divided. It was the fact that you threw 80% of your votes behind the democrats that put the democrats in the white house…what do you get out of it? …They’ve been down there four years. And all other legislation they’ve wanted to bring up they’ve brought it up and got it out of the way and now they bring up you. Now they bring up you. You put them first and they put you last. ‘Cause you’re a chump. A political chump. Any time you throw your weight behind a political party that controls two-thirds of the government and that party can’t keep the promise that it made to you during election time, and you’re dumb enough to walk around continuing to identifying yourself with that party…aw, I say, you been misled. You been had. You been took.”
You have, indeed, been took.
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Mia McKenzie is a writer and a smart, scrappy Philadelphian with a deep love of vegan pomegranate ice cream and fake fur collars. She is a black feminist and a freaking queer, facts that are often reflected in her writings, which have won her some awards and grants, such as the Astraea Foundation’s Writers Fund Award and the Leeway Foundation’s Transformation Award. She has a novel debuting in the fall and has a short story forthcoming in The Kenyon Review. Her work has been published at Jezebel.com, and recommended by The Root, Colorlines, Feministing, Angry Asian Man, and Crunk Feminist Collective. She is a nerd, and the creator of Black Girl Dangerous, a revolutionary blog.
