I stopped to think today about my choices in personal politics and various positions on relevant issues. I considered how I truly felt when it came to choosing one political ideology versus another and allying with one party over the other.

I considered the private values that I have held deeply throughout my life and how I applied those lessons learnt to how I vote.

I grew up in a working class Black family in a working class neighborhood in the northeast New Jersey city of Linden. This is the kind of place where we grew up playing in Little League baseball games on an old dusty diamond near the local airport. We looked forward to the first day of school so we could see all of our friends and compare our stories about our summer vacations (along with seeing each other’s new school year outfits).

Linden was the epitome of normalcy and stability in that area back then. We had relatively low crime and prided ourselves on that civility. Neighborhood disputes ended more often with a few punches thrown than shots fired. As kids, we gathered in small groups on brisk Halloween afternoons to trudge through the crisp fallen leaves and go door to door in search of the best treats. We were safe in a way that I don’t know exists anymore.

Most of my friends had at least one parent (mainly single Black mothers) in the home and had a sibling or two. We played together outside in every season! Our guardians made us understand the family and neighborhood norms, and held us to standards of accountability, civility, and responsibility. Neighborhood kids knew each other’s family members and our siblings pretty much all knew each other from the city schools.

We passed down to each generation which schools were tough, which parts of the neighborhood had dogs or other dangers, and whose parents were lenient. When we were old enough, usually in our early teens, we walked to the Linden Twin Cinema on Wood Avenue to watch one of only two film choices. The word “multiplex” wasn’t even a thing yet!

In Linden and the surrounding area, it was a rite of passage to earn your working papers (which are required for minors to work in the state) and get your first legal job at around 15 years old. We prided ourselves as youngsters in earning our own money and having spending power. Many of us had newspaper delivery jobs at even earlier ages, believe it or not.

We learned about civics and our role in the body politic as high school freshmen in basic political affairs classes. We had to turn in news article clippings each week to show that we were paying attention to the local, state, and national news. My generation also had to pass at least one semester of home economics and typing classes. We longed for the freedom to be allowed to take New Jersey Transit buses and trains to destinations along the Northeast Corridor and Raritan Valley transit lines. By age 17, those of us who were fortunate to have a car drove to pickup friends and sweethearts to head to the nearby malls at Woodbridge Center and Menlo Park.

Linden had its struggles, too. It wasn’t always nice outside there. Along St. Georges Avenue, the main thoroughfare through the city, there were plenty of crime and neighborhood drama scenes. Generations of families played out their nonsensical yet persistent “beef” (definition: a grudge or feud with someone) scenarios where someone said something about somebody’s something or other that caused a “beef” and the only real way to handle that was to have a fistfight. Those fights didn’t always resolve the issue at hand, though, and may have led to an unnecessarily explosive escalation.

Growing up in that type of environment forced me to learn how to avoid conflict with other Black men on the street while also navigating the contours of a racialized society. There weren’t just other Black men to worry about; I also had the dual threat of White police officers (and the systems that support their autonomy) to contend with. It wasn’t uncommon in my youth or early adulthood to witness the horrors of state-sponsored brutality personally or in the daily news.

Like so many other Black men, I felt the cold hand of oppression and burning hot slap of racism too many times to enumerate. My criminal record spells out the same sort of run-ins with police that became all too common during the mass incarceration era…alleged gun and drug possession, disorderly conduct, and other order maintenance offenses.

Those experiences taught me to value my freedom and the mechanisms that support it, like the ability to cast my vote, driving privileges, and being of service to my community.

After the final throes of substance abuse and criminality in my younger years, I decided to relearn how to be a responsible adult and productive citizen. I began to understand how politics played a substantial role in my daily life and which issues meant the most to me (and those like me).

Enlisting in the military added a new facet to my life – one of service to my country, countrymen, and ideals greater than my own petty personal preferences. I met people from other walks of life who shared their experiences and reasons for serving. I, too, offered them glimpses of what my life was like prior to taking the oath of enlistment and my deeply personal reasons for doing so. It was refreshing to hear so many diverse opinions and lessons learnt from places I hadn’t been exposed to before. I truly began, for the first time in my life, to understand how the patchwork of America is stitched together in common bonds of likeminded individuals with a collective purpose.

Traveling abroad also aided in my understanding of how the people and systems of the world interacted with one another to enable national and global societies. I learned the value of human interaction and healthy forms of communication from sitting in cafes around the globe and engaging in robust dialogue with a number of folks from various cultures and religions. Listening to the tales of persecution from refugees and the work experiences of expatriates led me to a heightened level of awareness of the issues affecting people beyond my immediate purview; it also taught me how to decipher the news I watched and to weed through the bullshit that politicians routinely spread.

As my worldly aperture widened, my perspective rebooted like a computer receiving its latest software update. My personal choices of who I wanted to represent me in Washington D.C. and the legislature of whatever state I resided in matured immensely. I knew that the nature and direction of conservativism didn’t suit me at all, as they stuck to a script of alienating people who looked like me. They championed legislation that sought to isolate certain segments of the population, mainly the lower-income persons and families that were largely responsible for the work that generated the wealth for America’s richest.

I have no earthly clue what it feels like to be extremely wealthy or be the CEO of a major corporation, so it’s implausible for me to identify with them to any meaningful degree. I can’t fathom making any decision to exploit anyone for my personal benefit. That just ain’t my thing. So, when I scrutinized the record of each of the major political parties, conservatives never appealed to my preferences or personal experiences, nor did they offer any rhetorical comforts in their campaign messaging.

Each election is an opportunity for us to choose the most qualified persons to represent us in local, state, and national elections. I don’t really subscribe to the notion that we “belong” to a party. HELL NO, I don’t “belong” to anyone! I do, however, believe that every person running for an office in the public trust has an obligation to be qualified for the position he or she is running for and that individual must reflect the values of their constituency.