Taking Responsibility: Matt Drew for City Council

One of my favorite TV shows is Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  In the show, a young California teenager suddenly has a great destiny placed on her: she is to become the Slayer, a magically-enhanced defender of the world against the evil forces of vampires and demons.  These creatures lurk both figuratively and literally beneath society, sucking the life out of it and trying to destroy it.  In her battles, she often turns vampires into dust with a sharp wooden stake to the heart, and eventually settles on a nickname for her preferred weapon:  Mr. Pointy.

The issue of race is something that has dogged Durham politics for many years, like a vampire underneath our society.  It drains our community, pulls down our discussions and policies, and taints our lives.  Voters do have a right to vote any way for any reason.  However, voters also have a duty to vote responsibly, to vote based on what they believe is best for Durham.  I strongly believe, and I suspect that Mr. Clement agrees, that voting based on race is definitely not best for Durham – no matter who you are voting for.

If you are a voter, go look in the mirror and honestly appraise yourself and your reasons for voting.  If any of the reasons you voted for me include the fact that I’m white, I have a message for you:

Please stay home in November.  I don’t want your vote.

If you find yourself in this position, I strongly urge you both to re-examine yourself and your motivations for voting.  You also need to re-examine what Libertarians are about, because you clearly don’t understand anything about the person you are voting for.  If you vote for me based on race, you do so with the understanding that I fundamentally disagree with you and will not represent your interests on City Council.

If one of the reasons you voted for Mr. Clement is because he’s black, I want you to do something for me.  I want you to approach a man who has honorably served on the City Council for 26 years, a man who fought against open racism in the great Civil Rights battles fifty years ago, a man who has certainly seen and suffered more racial ugliness in his life than I can ever know,  and  I want you to tell him to his face that you voted for him because of the color of his skin.  I hope that if you did that, he’d politely tell you where to shove it.  And he’d be right, because you are insulting many of the ideals he and many others have paid a huge price to attain.

If we as a community are voting based on race, or even influenced by race, it is a reason to be ashamed.  Historically, as Mr. Hyman pointed out, we have a number of things to be ashamed about.  But things have changed in our society with regard to racial issues, and they continue to change for the better.  This election can and should be about our disagreements on policy and the role of government in our city, not what we look like.  It is long past time for us to put Mr. Pointy to work and stake this vampire for good.