"What do you have to lose?"

Dear Massa Trump, 

There's something I need you to understand. Your generalizations of races and religions will do nothing in "winning the vote." I need you to understand that your impression of "the Blacks", that we are all poor, uneducated, violent beings, is wrong. It's offensive. It's demeaning. It affirms that all of my efforts have been for naught. My strive for academic success and global understanding is useless, because all I'm seen as is a poor, uneducated, angry black woman. 

You keep saying, "what do [we] have to lose?" regarding the African-American population voting for you. I need you to understand how that pushes me away, deters me from considering you as a presidential candidate. By saying this, you're implying that we have lost everything. You're implying that we have no hope to change our "fate" and to thrive as minorities in this country. It makes me feel threatened and set back, as if society isn't already doing that enough.

So please stop. Stop generalizing my race and painting us as a hopeless, weak, "backwards" people. Stop acting as if the only way we can exist is as drug dealers, prostitutes, murderers, and single inner-city families living off of government handouts. Stop treating the issue of poverty as something filthy, as if it, and all its components (aka people) should be thrown out with the trash. We are not all the top 1%, but we are all still living.

Please acknowledge my aspirations as valid. Please remind me that my education is worth something. Please show me, somehow, in some way, that my life matters. I'm only asking that you regard and treat me, and my people, like we're human (shouldn't be too hard, considering we are).

So you ask: "what do you have to lose?"

I have everything to lose. I have my livelihood to lose. I have my dignity to lose. I have my strength to lose. I have a solidarity and understanding in my culture that allows me to keep moving forward on the most difficult days to lose. Frankly, I have my humanity to lose.

Stop treating me like my life doesn't matter more than just as a vote in your favor. I am not voting in this election simply to satisfy your ego. I'm voting for my future and my safety, as well as for my country's future and safety. More than that, I'm voting for progress, solidarity, and change.

I will not throw away a vote on someone who would not stop to give me the time of day, simply because I am black. I will not throw away my vote on someone who continues to perpetuate marginalization in our society. I will not vote for someone who defiles the image of an entire people simply for political gain. 

I will not vote for someone whose views on the social aspect of our society are moving backwards, back to the age of discrimination and segregation, back to the days when diversity was no more than a myth. 

I will not vote for that, because my life is a constant battle against those very things.

I guess you could say I have a fight to lose, in voting for you. 

I am not going to lose this fight.