LeBron James has never shied away from using his voice and his platform to shine a light on the ills of systemic racism.
These issues are a complex web and will require a sustained effort that digs away at institutional injustice to dismantle. Often times, the argument presented for fighting back against social ills is that people simply go out and vote.
It’s simplistic, reductive advice, and LeBron James, for one, doesn’t have any patience for it. In a short tweet, James pointed out how meaningless the go out and vote advice is. Early Tuesday, James quote-tweeted political reporter Laura Barrón-López, who wrote that it took Black Lives Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown three hours to vote in her predominately black neighborhood in Georgia.
James drilled down into the heart of why that’s a problem.
“Everyone talking about “how do we fix this?” They say “go out and vote?” What about asking if how we vote is also structurally racist?” he wrote
People tend to use voting as the first answer in fixing these systematic issues the U.S. faces, but that doesn’t check out. This James tweet perfectly shows why.
Voter suppression is a real thing. Black people, other people of color and poor people have a much harder time going out to vote than their white, affluent counterparts. If the country is going to see some meaningful change, dealing with voter suppression and gerrymandering are one of the many issues that need to be fixed. James is highlighting this.
Good on LeBron for recognizing this and lending his voice to it. One thing we can all agree on, is that voting shouldn’t be this hard.
