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“If You Don’t Vote For Obama, You’re Racist!”
These same acquaintances who said this supported Trump eight years later
It was the fall of 2008, and I was in the sixth grade. In the gym locker room, my mostly White and some Hispanic and Asian classmates in my middle school chanted “yes we can!” “yes we can!”
They told everyone that if they didn’t support Obama or want to vote for Obama, they were racist. They told everyone that supporting John McCain, they were racist for not supporting the first Black president of America. The classmates who were the most vocal in their public support for Obama were the jocks and probably considered the most popular kids in the school.
I, for the record, completely agreed with them, and so did the majority of my classmates, it seemed like. Those days, politics wasn’t as polarizing and divisive as the Trump era, and the social studies department took anonymous surveys of who everyone was planning on voting for. The numbers were that around 70% of students in the middle school supported Obama, while only 30% supported McCain.
During my social studies class that year, one of my classmates asked the teacher “is it true that if you don’t support Obama, you’re racist?” The teacher said it wasn’t true, and people should not be saying that to each other. Yes, it…
