(BALTIMORE – October 19, 2026) – I am tired. I am not tired of fighting. I am tired of having to fight the same lie over and over in 2026, as if this country hasn’t already paid enough blood and treasure for it. On Saturday, I covered a No Kings rally and posted the footage. The comments weren’t debate. It was diaper jokes, nursing-home cracks, accusations of “paid actors,” and clown emojis. Everyday Americans exercised the most fundamental right this nation guarantees—the right to assemble, stand up, and say no—and strangers lined up online to mock their age and dignity. The irony? Nearly seven in ten viewers were 45 or older. The footage attracted a largely middle-aged and older audience, while the comment section was filled with jokes about aging. Let me say plainly what this column is about: On Tuesday, November 3, I am asking you to vote blue, up and down the ballot, in Maryland and across the country. Racism is on the ballot this year. Contempt is on the ballot. And after decades on these streets, I have seen enough. “Daddy, Do You Hate White People?” It was 1972. I was seven years old. We lived on the second and third floors above my father’s funeral home on East North Avenue. One afternoon, standing in the alley out back, I looked up and asked him: “Daddy, do you hate white people?” He looked back and said: “No. I don’t hate anybody. I hate things that some people do, but I don’t hate anybody.” I have carried that moment my whole life. I thank God he didn’t raise me to hate. My mother finished the lesson: You are better than no one, and no one is better than you. Booker T. Washington captured that truth in 1901: “I had rather be what I am, a member of the Negro race, than be able to claim membership with the most favoured of any other race.” He wrote that he grew sad whenever any group claimed privileges simply by accident of birth, because genuine merit, “no matter under what skin found, is, in the long run, recognized and rewarded.” Malcolm X gave us pride, and he asked the question that still cuts to the marrow: Who taught you to hate yourself? Pride that needs no one beneath it is healthy self-determination. Contempt for someone else’s skin is a sickness. Racism is a poison. If you carry it, it inevitably gets all over you. This November, we decide how much of that poison runs our government. I Know What It Looks Like Up Close Don’t tell me racism is a thing of the past. I’ve had to run from it with my own two feet. I was 13 when I went to the Montgomery Ward in South Baltimore for sale-priced Wrangler jeans. As I walked out of Ward’s, a pack of white boys with dogs and bats was waiting. “There he is. Get his ass.” I didn’t know Jesse Owens had…