Perhaps what you misunderstand is the concept of intersectional disenfranchisement. If I am a Black woman, and my mother was a Black woman, and her mother was a Black woman, then statistically and historically in the U.S., only 1/3 of us had the opportunity to vote in our daughter’s best interest due to the compounded effects of anti-Black and anti-woman status quos (not to mention other factors like anti-poverty, anti-queerness, religious discrimination, migrant discrimination, abuse of the the felony system to make free labor, and many more). When I speak today, I carry not just my own voice, but the silenced ones of those who came before me, denied the right to shape the future they birthed.

And because of that generational silencing, my daughter and I live with the consequences — in the schools we attend, the care we receive, the safety we’re afforded, and the doors still closed to us. We did not vote for this.