Every time an election comes around black voters are told how important it is to vote. They are told that the ancestors of  African-Americans shed blood and died so that future generations of blacks would be able to vote.

People want us to exercise our right to vote but those same people don’t want to uphold and/or enforce the laws that protect and maintain voting rights!

It’s 2015 and it seems like every state in the Union has some prohibition, some clause, some law or some organized effort to deny and decrease the number of votes cast by blacks and other minorities.

Some people can’t vote if they have been to jail even though they have served their sentences and paid their so-called debt to society. Some people can’t vote because they don’t have a government issued identification card. Some people can’t vote because their voting place was suddenly and probably secretly changed. Some people can’t vote even if they are registered voters because of a devilish trick called “partisanship” that, for instance, won’t let independents and Democrats vote in a primary election if all of the candidates are Republican.

Malcolm X said it many years ago and I’ll say it today, the people you love, the candidates that you love and the political party that you identify with, give money to and throw all of your votes behind will love and support your political enemies more than they will love and support you!

Forty years ago, you put politicians first and they put you last and it is still that way at this very moment!

In addition, the so-called Voting Rights Act of 1965, considered to be the most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever enacted in the country, is little more than a political joke!

Even when black people think they are voting for somebody, they are voting for nobody!

Political parties are nothing but political players, playing like they care about your political interests, playing like they care about the needs of your community and playing like they want black people to improve, progress, grow and thrive!

Yes, you love the Voting Rights Act. You love the fact that it is a law and therefore, in your mind, it is your pathway to personal and communal paradise.

Well, one political law that Malcolm X pointed out was the law that calls for the removal of any elected official that was elected in a city or state that was found to have been elected when voters were denied voting rights and protections.

If that one law was respected and enforced there wouldn’t be a klansman, a skinhead, a neo-nazi, a devil or a beast in office anywhere in America!

If you love your right to vote you should take voting seriously and embrace voting rights and put an end to your misled, distorted, irrational and inappropriate “Voting Wrong Acts!” 

Lucius Gantt is a consultant based in Tallahassee and author of the book Beast Too: Dead Man Writing. He may be reached at allworldconsultants.net.