My spiritual teacher is funny. I spent last night thinking and tweeting about voting. Then during my meditation time, I was led to a random page of a 1000 page spiritual text that discussed.. voting and the presidential election. The text was written almost 70 years ago.

Then, I was led to a quote from Du Bois about freedom that I had not previously seen. When I found it in context, I discovered that it appeared in a volume from The Crisis that was also about . . . voting.

"Freedom is a state of mind: a spiritual unchoking of the wells of human power and superhuman love."

- W.E.B. Du Bois, 1914

On its own, this is an intriguing quote. You may assume, as did I, that Du Bois was writing about Black freedom. The truth is a bit more complicated. In fact, this quote appears in a satirical essay in The Crisis which critiques white racism and notions of white freedom.

In the essay, entitled "Free, White and Twenty-One", Du Bois provides an early example of the ways in which Black activists and scholars have long theorized white supremacy as necessarily involving the dehumanization, dispossession and oppression of "white people", too.

Du Bois urges whites who are "free, white and twenty-one"--that is, of voting age--to join the NAACP. He asks: "Is there anything in America that is so strangling brotherhood and narrowing humanity and encouraging hatred, lust and murder as race prejudice?"

"Is there any conceivable crime that [race prejudice] does not daily excuse? Any conceivable inhumanity that it may not deify? If you want freedom, then join this association and fight race hatred."

- W.E.B. Du Bois

You will notice that Du Bois do not tell whites who are "free, white and twenty-one" that they should seek freedom primarily through voting. Instead he urged them to get involved in a political movement for the liberation of all people, including Black people.

To be clear, Du Bois spent a lot of time in The Crisis opining on elections and urging people to vote for specific candidates. Du Bois of 1914 was not yet the Du Bois of 1956 who finally exhausted his faith in the U.S. electoral system..

What's interesting about this essay on voting and (white) freedom is that Du Bois frames his call for multiracial organizing and mobilization within a critique of the ways in which elite interests and capitalism had already thoroughly corrupted democratic processes and voting.

"[Y]ou can vote. Or at least you think you can. Or if you are really wise you know what a farce voting is in this land. Why? Because a Southern voter has from twice to seven times the power of a Northern voter and South Carolina far outweighs Illinois in political significance."

Why is voting a farce? Du Bois concludes, correctly:

"Because political democracy cannot be linked with industrial despotism, else the result is the rule of the rich."

He then goes on to clarify the links between "race prejudice", class oppression and capitalist corruption.

"..industrial despotism is founded on slavery.. Negroes were slaves, they are peons.. and receive less than can support them in decency. Against them, white workingmen must compete and the votes stolen from Negroes are used by white capitalists to keep the laborer in bondage."

Du Bois asks: "Is your vote safe then as long as disfranchisement and peonage are in the land?"

(peonage here refers to debt-bound labor)

It is interesting to read Du Bois' critique of voting in conversation with his essay "Why I Won't Vote" indicating why he believed democracy was "dead in the United States". In 1914, he still thought antiracism could "save" American democracy. 42 years later, he changed his mind.

https://twitter.com/alwaystheself/status/866826496853389312?s=20

Personally, my desire is for people to finally understand that whether you or not you feel called to vote, democracy has never been achieved in the United States. A country born of genocide and slavery, then maintained through corruption and violence, cannot be democratic.

This doesn't mean that political participation and voting are hopeless endeavors. It means we should be honest with ourselves and each other about the system in which we are operating. Without this honesty about our past and present, we cannot imagine or build better futures.

We live in a society built on violent oppression that presents itself to the world as the face of democracy. This is no doubt better than living in a society that rejects democratic ideals altogether, but this farcical "freedom" is an affront to morality and common sense.

As long as the limits of our political imaginations are set by the same governing apparatus that maintains millions of people in bondage to the carceral state, to debt, to industrial capitalists, to imperial war, to myths of superiority and inferiority, we will never know freedom

What does freedom mean? Well, let us at least acknowledge that a political system built on genocide, colonial violence, chattel slavery, white supremacist ideology, the monetized rape of Black women and capitalist exploitation cannot legitimately define or practice freedom.

Du Bois' definition of freedom is worth reconsidering. Again, he writes: "Freedom is a state of mind: a spiritual unchoking of the wells of human power and superhuman love."

This is not the same corrupt and farcical notion of "freedom" conceived by white supremacist enslavers.

A basic prerequisite of self realization and self determination is being able to define freedom for yourself. This requires letting go of the false and oppressive ideas given us by people so backwards that they could not even recognize ALL human beings as their equals.

We must be clear and honest with ourselves that freedom cannot be found in systems built by colonizers and fascists. Even as we do whatever we must within the system as it currently exists, we must also do the more difficult work of turning within to imagine anew..

https://twitter.com/alwaystheself/status/1267350102211014664?s=20