It’s not easy to know how to support Blacks and other people of color in America when you’re an older white liberal like me. Criticize or offer advice and you sound patronizing or racist. Stay detached, and you’re not helping their cause. Donate money and it seems another conscience-easing handout.
Yet you want to contribute something–your time, your effort–what? Blacks’ status as second-class citizens in this country fuels my outrage. I want to do something about it, something more more dynamic than donating money or marching at a protest rally no matter how effective such actions may sometimes be.
What to do?
A little research reveals there are many ways to become more actively involved. One of the best is to maintain minorities’ ability to express their political opinions at the ballot box. The right to vote remains the cornerstone to participating in everything America represents or has to offer.
Through legislative and judicial machinations, vested interests have curtailed that right, however. Voter suppression, particularly for Blacks and people of color is a reality in Texas, Georgia, and several other of states with more seeking to follow their lead.
Yet, the cause is not hopeless. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Black Voters Matter Fund, Common Cause, and dozens of other groups are partnering to erase voter inequities through phone banking, texting, and letter-writing state legislators.
One group that offers the most bang for your activist buck is the Center for Common Ground. Its stated mission is to “to educate and empower under-represented voters in voter suppression states to engage in elections and advocate for their right to vote.”
From amending the filibuster to postcarding “underserved communities,” Common Ground provided organizational tools that transformed my political impotence into activist reality. And isn’t channeling outrage into resiliency and courage part of what Black History celebrates?
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