Stop telling voters that politicians don't care about Black people
How Brittney Griner became my latest example to try to get through to non-voters and anti-political protesters
The following post is part of my former Substack publication “One Black Woman’s Vote” that is now in “I Do See Color.” To see more OBWV posts from 2025, click here. To see OBWV posts from 2021-2024, click here. For OBWV posts from 2026, click here. In 2026, new OBWV posts will be published on the second Saturday of each month.
I heard all the hints being dropped. I listened to the guy I was dating early on start talking about how great his Superbowl parties are. And my eyebrows shot up when he discussed which team was better and who had championship rings. Even if I took advocacy for Colin Kaepernick off the table, I knew I was going to turn down his invite for this Superbowl party. I was about ready to take a nap while listening to him blabber on about his favorite sports teams.
Unless you count swimming and an unserious game of bowling, sports are not my thing. For about three years, I worked on a breaking news desk and had to follow sports well enough to update news pages, but I was miserable and much preferred national news, crime and entertainment.
I know enough to not mention touchdowns during a basketball game, home runs during a football game, field goals during a baseball game or And Ones during a hockey game. (Note: There was a brief time where I was wearing Chicago Blackhawks jerseys as trendy local fashion, but that stopped immediately after I met Native American tribes and signed petitions to stop using their likeness for sports mascots.)
But I know where my lane is when it comes to sports, and I stay in it. Halftime performances aside, my lane? Silence!
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Why do people who don’t follow politics have so much to say about it?
Author and voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams once said that people who say they’re “not into politics” should know that “politics is into you — and it’s a stalker.” She wasn’t wrong. Whether American citizens have the right to vote or choose not to vote voluntarily, whoever is elected in the state and federal Senate, the state and federal House of Representatives, the alder(wo)man’s office, the Attorney General’s office, the governor’s office and the mayor’s office is going to affect your everyday living. All of you.
Still, I grow impatient with people who refuse to learn anything about politics but go out of their way to speak on how we need a third party (when they’re already not paying attention to the first two), who choose social media influencers for political advice (especially the guy who smells women’s seats when they leave the room) and who declare that politicians have never cared about Black people so why should we care about politics. Here’s why.
Have you checked out Trinity's “Five Minutes”? You should!
The debate about Black people being abandoned by politicians
I gritted my teeth while watching Senator Tim Scott cosign Donald Trump’s blatant lie about federal renovation costs totaling $3.1 billion instead of $2.7 billion. Before Federal Chair Jerome Powell could clarify that Trump was including five-year-old renovations into this “increase,” Scott was just nodding away at anything Trump said.
Scott’s behavior reminded me too much of TV personality Harris Faulkner jumping in to claim the audio was bad when Trump got mad at an ABC host during the NABJ interview pre-election. Like TV sitcom sidekicks, both Faulkner and Scott agreed to the first thing they heard without bothering to do a thorough fact-check or even do a general Google search, solely because Trump said it.
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And this mindset is how I feel whenever someone jumps into a comment section and claims no politician has ever cared about Black people anyway, so why should we vote. I’ve heard this over and over again, but it always seems to be from people who either don’t vote at all or have bare minimum interest in the topic. And I can’t wrap my mind around why this continues.
In a recent Reddit debate, this happened again.
The question I was asked: “I don’t get this whole ‘trump dgaf about Black people’. It’s honestly a nonsensical sentiment. What politician has cared?”