Your vote matters, right?

In America, voting takes place for our democracy to run smoothly. Americans get to choose their president, vice president, governors, senators and so much more. But what if I told you America doesn’t care about your vote?

CNN released an exit poll on the recent presidential election. They labelled the different races who voted. There were White, Latino, Black and Asian. However, other races that didn’t fit into those were labelled something else. 

This has caused chaos throughout the United States as Native Americans felt especially targeted with this. Many people feel as if America is trying to silence their vote especially under the circumstances this election held with the pandemic, they felt very uncomfortable that they weren’t being acknowledged. 

“This type of language continues the efforts to erase Indigenous and other voters who don’t neatly fall into the race categories listed in the graphic,” said the Native American Journalist Association in an interview with the LA Times. 

The government trying to erase Indigenous peoples haven’t been a new thing either. Such things as the trail of tears, Indian removal act of 1830, and U.S. breaking treaties are just a few of the different examples of this. 

What makes America stand out from other countries is the peoples’ right to vote. It took many years for people of color and women to fight for this right. Then for it to be belittled is ignorant and ridiculous. 

Just being labelled as something else and not your race is very disrespectful too. There is so much more diversity even if they are smaller than the other races depicted on statistics or mainstream media.

Many Native Americans have made this situation into memes and jokes all across the internet. It’s sad because it reflects back to the election and how they feel about it.

This year alone, many Native Americans across the country have done more than usual to even get their communities to vote. There was even an uprise of Native voters this year in different states that went up to 90%.

Many people are waiting for the major news network to issue a public apology as this may or may not affect future voting. They’re disappointed with this as it’s a major news outlet for America. Anyone would be if this happened to them. 

Four years from now, there will be another election where another generation gets to vote. What happens if certain people believe that it doesn’t matter?