Before I went to NYU, I lived in a primarily upper-middle class community with little diversity. I knew little about feminism, sexism, or racism. This all changed when I moved to New York. I do not follow politics closely (or at least I didn’t until this current election), but as a writer, I do pay close attention to the problems and the people that surround me on a day to day basis.
Everyday, I take a cab driven by a muslim man who asks intently about my studies, how my schooling is going, and encourages me to fight through the end of the semester and study hard. He tells me about how his job is humble but how it is difficult, and providing for his family is always a toss up. He loves to see students like me working for an incredible future.
Everyday, I walk into a class room where I, a white woman, am in the minority. I am surrounded by an incredibly racially diverse, sexually diverse, liberal student body that has made me question everything that I, a registered Republican, have grown up to know. I have been forced to take classes on feminism, read Ta-Nehisi Coates and Edward Said, and check my privilege on more than one occassion. I have become a scholar that understands the importance of economic policies that my party supports but also the value of the social programs and ideologies that the left promotes.
There are also ways which living in New York has made me scared to be a woman. While I have come to appreciate the culture that surrounds the city as I find myself sitting between a woman wearing a hijab and a man wearing a yamika on the subway, I have also found myself every. single. day. facing the slurs of men who think it is their right to approach me, to give me unwanted compliments, and to corner me while I am alone. Whether I am wearing no makeup and workout clothes, or a skirt and full face of lipstick and mascara, I have been cat-called, made uncomfortable, and driven scared. More than once I have not been able to enjoy a peaceful ride home due to the multiple men that think it’s okay to say perverted things to a woman ten years younger than them. To my parents and family who support Trump, I love you, but: do you think this is okay? That is the ideology that Trump has endlessly promoted throughout his campaign and those are the actions he has participated in himself. I should not be scared to attend a party and face the same fate as what has happened at Stanford, nor should I even have fear when walking down the street. I do not want to spend the rest of my time in New York with my headphones in and my head down. While Hillary has been married to a man who may have also fallen in line with Trump, we should take note that she has never not been an advocate against the latter. (And also: when did it become okay to judge a woman’s capabilities based on her husband?).
And please, do not get me started on the reality of climate change that Trump has continuously denied. New York is a disgustingly blistering city in the winter, and yet it is November and I wore flip-flops yesterday. The tides are slowly rising around Manhattan and those who are landlocked are unaware.
If you look closely at the electoral college results state by state, you will see an overwhelming support for Hillary in the urban areas. This is because those who live in a metropolitan area such as New York have been the most exposed to amazing diversity, but also the scary reality that our problems are real and the world does not revolve around purely economic interests. As we enter the next four years, I know that while the changes Trump may be able to actually enact are miniscule due to our government’s checks and balances system, he has promoted dangerous ideologies over the last year that have only exposed how much of America still believes in them. To those people who do not think that sexual assault, racism, homophobia or Islamophobia are more important than Trumps “policies” (and this is an argument I have heard frequently), I challenge you to live in New York, to attend a school like NYU, for more than a year. And then tell me that you are not changed.
Hillary, I am sorry. But most importantly: thank you for fighting.
– M. Fraser