If 2025 taught Black individuals something (typically the laborious approach), it’s that disengagement just isn’t neutrality. It’s give up.
Too many people flirted with the harmful myths that voting doesn’t matter, that each main political events are the identical, or that withholding our vote is a few type of righteous protest. The outcomes of 2025—coverage rollbacks, emboldened extremists, and communities left uncovered—made painfully clear that these concepts don’t punish the system; they punish us.
The “Voting doesn’t matter” BS
One of the damaging lies we encountered final 12 months was the declare that voting doesn’t matter. It’s an argument that sounds radical however features as reactionary. Black individuals didn’t achieve entry to the poll as a result of it was symbolic. We fought for it as a result of it’s a software.
As journalist Pleasure Reid and thought chief Lurie Daniel Favors have repeatedly emphasised, elections have penalties. Judges, faculty boards, prosecutors, governors, and presidents form every day life lengthy after marketing campaign indicators disappear. Once we don’t vote, choices are nonetheless made. They’re simply made with out us. And the sources, applications, and protections we’d like are directed to communities that did vote.
“Each events are the identical” fallacy
Intently tied to that fantasy is the lazy assertion that each main political events are the identical. If 2025 didn’t slap you upside the top with the fact that variations exist, they usually matter massive time, then you definitely’re extra dedicated to fairy tales than actuality.
Pretending the Dems and GOP are “totally different sides of the identical coin” ignores materials actuality. Events might each fall wanting our full liberation agenda. Nonetheless, one persistently works to develop voting rights, shield social applications, appoint judges who respect civil rights, and fund public establishments. On the identical time, the opposite has overtly embraced voter suppression, ebook bans, and anti-Black historic erasure.
As Black Voters Matter reminds us, the query just isn’t whether or not a celebration loves us, however which one responds once we set up, strain, and vote as a bloc.
The one-issue voter entice
One other lesson from 2025 is the hazard of turning into a one-issue voter. Lowering our political engagement to a single concern, irrespective of how deeply felt, permits opportunists to govern us. Howard College professor Greg Carr, Ph.D., has lengthy warned that liberation requires historic reminiscence and strategic pondering, not emotional response.
Our lives are multi-dimensional. Housing, schooling, healthcare, environmental justice, legal justice, and labor rights are all linked. Voting for somebody who aligns with you on one problem however harms you on 5 others just isn’t principled. It’s problematic. And short-sighted.
Voting isn’t a wedding proposal
We additionally should basically change how we take into consideration voting itself. Voting just isn’t a recognition contest. It’s not a persona endorsement or a church roll name. Voting is a hiring choice. While you solid a poll, you might be selecting somebody to carry sources, funding, applications, and safety again to your neighborhood. Sirius XM radio host Karen Hunter typically reminds us that politics is about energy, not efficiency. The one actual questions are the 2 Favors shares virtually every day on her many consciousness-raising platforms: Who will do essentially the most good for our neighborhood? Or, when good is proscribed, who will do us the least hurt?
No excellent candidate, solely actual penalties
That framing requires maturity. There’s no excellent candidate. There by no means has been and by no means will probably be. Ready for somebody who checks each field is a recipe for everlasting disappointment and repeated losses. Voting just for candidates who “excite” you is how many people have been blindsided in 2025. Pleasure doesn’t fund faculties. Charisma doesn’t cease foreclosures. Selecting the most suitable choice obtainable just isn’t promoting out; it’s a technique. Write-in votes and protest votes might really feel righteous, however in shut elections, they’re functionally wasted votes that assist the worst choice win.
Civic engagement requires self-discipline and due diligence
Civic engagement additionally calls for work. Which means researching candidates, understanding their information, and fact-checking claims earlier than sharing them. Favors has persistently challenged Black audiences to cease outsourcing our pondering to viral clips and bad-faith actors. Spreading misinformation, particularly about candidates who might materially assist our communities, does the opposition’s work for them.
Living proof, the acutely aware and progressive comic D.L. Hughley, together with a number of different brothers with nationwide platforms, ended up apologizing to then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris for spreading misinformation about her voting file; misinformation that possible value her tens of hundreds of votes or extra in 2024.
2026 and past: Technique over cynicism
The ultimate lesson of 2025 is that voting is critical however not ample. Civic engagement is year-round work: Attending faculty board conferences, supporting native organizers, and holding elected officers accountable after election day. As Stacey Abrams has proven, sustained participation, not episodic outrage, is how energy is constructed.
The decision to motion is obvious. In 2026 and past, we should reject political nihilism and undertake a strategic strategy to politics. Vote each time. Analysis each race. Arrange between elections. Stress these we elect. Our ancestors fought too laborious for us to casually discard one of many few levers of energy we possess. The lesson from 2025 is straightforward: once we interact intelligently and collectively, we will form outcomes. Once we don’t, another person will “deal with” our enterprise who has no enterprise in our enterprise.
