I told myself after last Thursday that I was done tweeting, status-updating, and talking about the election. While it was hard for me to accept, and still is, the very devastating outcome of last Tuesday, I decided out of anger, frustration, and just plain exhaustion that I was completely done devoting my time and energy to the subject. I was tired of hearing the words ‘popular vote’, ‘delegates’, and ‘Make America Great Again’. Nevertheless, as tired and angry I was, I couldn’t stop talking about it, no matter how hard I tried. Donald J. Trump Sr. is the president-elect of the United States. And as a black woman living in America, that is absolutely terrifying.
There have been over 200 reported hate crimes in the United States since Donald Trump won the presidency last Tuesday. Over 200, ranging from verbal, to physical. In 2016, white students are posting signs that say ‘Colored’ and ‘Whites only’ over water fountains in high school hallways in Florida. At San Diego State University in San Diego, California, a Muslim girl was physically assaulted in a parking garage, and had her car stolen. Here on campus at the U of O, three high schoolers decided it would be funny to walk around on campus in black face. One or two acts of racial insensitivity are ‘isolated incidents’—three or more is a pattern.
I must give Donald Trump some credit—his 16 -month disorganized, bizarre and whimsical campaign did a fantastic job of exposing the festering bed of racism in America that so many people have tried very hard to deny in the recent years. With Trump successfully riding on the coattails of racist rhetoric, it is quite literally impossible for anyone to ignore that racism in this country still in fact exists, and the hate crimes that have occurred within the last week are hard, uncoincidental, physical proof of that. If there is anything he should be proud of at the end of this disastrous election, it is that he has forced the entire nation to stare race directly in the face, whether they want to or not. So, in that aspect, congratulations, Mr. Trump.
Trump’s victory left me with many emotions that can only be felt and understood, if you stand in the shoes of any black person in America right now. To deny the racial divide that was so clearly solidified with the election results last Tuesday, would be as illogical as denying the fact that those who voted for Donald Trump, chose to ignore the racist sentiments that made his campaign so successful. He was formally endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan, and American Nazi Party, which has not happened in any election in this century. Refreshing my Twitter timeline and seeing that he had reached the needed delegates to clinch the presidency, was like seeing the country setback 50 years, right before my eyes. I was in total, utter disbelief.
In my disbelief, I considered Trump’s campaign slogan; ‘Make America Great Again’, and I found that the ‘again’ clause did not apply to me, or anyone else like me. Never was there ever a time in the United States where America was great for all citizens, and there is no way around that. Period. This is a literal fact that anyone who attended an elementary school and learned about slavery, Native American genocide, and the Civil Rights movement cannot dispute. There has never been a time when America was truly as free and as ‘great’ for every single person in this country. So, admittedly, I am a little confused as to what ‘again’ Donald Trump and his supporters are referring to. Because there was never a time in our history where black people, Latinos, and other people of color have ever reaped the benefits of a ‘great America’. Notwithstanding, I truly do love this country, and will be eternally indebted to her for all the opportunities that I currently have soley because I was born here. Nevertheless, I cannot ignore the fact that those opportunities did not become avaliable to me until very recently, and still, to some degree, are not.
I took a much-needed break from social media in the wake of the election. On one side, I felt the strong connection with those who stood in solidarity with me, and every other person of color, who genuinely felt fear that only our grandparents could relate to. On the other side, it was clear that the feelings of fear did not register, and that my feelings, and the feelings of millions of Americans of color, did not matter. It was about a ‘victory’ that, unfortunately, half the country could not participate in. To be completely honest, what hurt the most was seeing tweets from kids I grew up with, saying, “Get over it! #Trump2016”, as if racism is something one can just ‘get over’. Nevertheless, I did not blame them for their ignorance, because they will never experience the horrors of racism in America. For them, this ‘victory’ could be celebrated with memes and internet trolling, while others were afraid to attend school or work the next day.
There was a very clear divide—an us, and a them. A particular boy I went to high school with tweeted “HAHA people actually think Donald Trump is going to bring back slavery lmao”. Imagine the privilege that comes with thinking that that is even remotely funny. While I highly doubt that that is even a possibility, many of the people who voted for him truly wouldn’t mind the idea, hypothetically. I blocked him immediately after, and my Twitter feed has never been more beautiful.
My feelings about the election extend beyond Hillary Clinton’s loss—I was skeptical about voting for her in the first place, with her troubling past with minorities as well. In the same instance, it was not, in my opinion, ever about liberalism and conservatism. I, along with millions of other people of color, would have [tried] done our best to accept Trump’s victory with as much humility as we could muster, if he had not run on racist ideology and propaganda. I would have tried my best to ‘get over it’, if his supporters had not tweeted about how “N*ggers can go back to Africa if they’re upset” or “No more apes in America. We’re taking our country back!” I would have swallowed the biggest lump in my throat, and tried to ‘move on’ if Trump stans did not dress in blackface for laughs on Snapchat at a Christian university in Texas, or add black students at the University of Pennsylvania to a ‘public lynching’ GroupMe chat, just days after Trump won.
I know that not every single person who voted for Donald Trump is a racist. That much I know. I do also know, however, that every single person who voted for Donald Trump chose to overlook his racism. And that is the problem. Standing idly by while a man calls blacks the “laziest human beings on Earth”, calls Mexicans “criminals and rapists”, and then voting for that man, while saying, “Well, I obviously don’t agree with everything he said”, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. In a sense, it would be better to not offer any explanation as to why you voted for a man with such warped, bigoted views, that resonated with a clear majority of his supporters, who are in fact racists.
What has truly baffled me about the whole thing, is that while so many people are tired of racism, so many people are tired of talking about racism, and I find it quite ironic. I find it ironic how people are tired of hearing about race in America, yet voted for a man whose campaign principles directly aligned with the most racist Americans. I also find it rather confusing how talking about race seems to upset so many people, rather than seeing racism around them. I feel like race in America is like that aunt at Thanksgiving dinner who always has just a little too many glasses of wine and ends up making a complete ass of herself—if you ignore her, eventually she will pass out in the guest bedroom, and when she wakes up in the morning, everyone will walk on egg shells to avoid bringing up what she did the night before. Except everyone knows what she did, everyone is tired of the same thing every year, but no one is talking about it. America—we must talk about our ‘drunk aunt’—we must talk about race.
Being one of the less than 600 black students here at the U of O is a lot harder than it would appear to someone who is white. After the election, and seeing the aftermath and wave of racial violence and intolerance across the nation, including here on campus, I have begun to feel very unsafe. I find myself looking over my shoulder a lot more, clinching my can of pepper spray when I walk home from the library at night, and not wanting to leave my apartment for anything that is not mandatory. I keep telling myself that this is not normal, and I shouldn’t have to live like this. And yet, here I am, in 2016, bracing myself for someone to call me the N-word, or physically assault me just for being black on a predominately white campus. Walking out of my front door every morning terrifies me. Crossing the street, and feeling like every car that slows down is about to hurl a racial slur at me, or run me over, makes my heart race. I cannot make up that fear.
If you cannot understand nor sympathize with the fears of racism that every black American deals with on a daily basis, I do not ask you to. In fact, I do not want you to. If the results of the election last Tuesday left you completely indifferent, good for you. If you’re happy that Donald Trump is about to become our 45th president, I am truly glad that you live a life where this will not affect you. I, however, cannot, and will not ever relate. I, along with so many other people who were blatantly insulted and offended by the Trump campaign over the past year, will never be able to relate. We will never understand what that ‘victory’ last Tuesday meant for you. We will never understand how it is possible to see the backlash of this election as nothing more than a “temper tantrum”, to quote Fox News, when we as Americans of color, feel the immediate, and very real danger that comes with it.
My point is not to force you to reconsider who you voted for. Part of living in a democracy is being able to exercise your right to participate in public elections. Regardless of your reasons behind voting for Trump, in the same instance, my point is for you to ask yourself why. I felt a lot of bitterness and confusion when I saw that my white friends, who I thought valued our friendship over the years, voted for a racist. While asking yourself why, do not deny the racism in this country that allowed his victory to happen. Do not deny that it exists, that it is a real fear for so many of us, and that this outcome has made millions afraid to live in their own skin. Some will try and paint a completely different narrative of Donald Trump; say he is just ‘not politically correct’, didn’t mean what he said he said the way he said it, and that it is ‘not what it looks like’. But sometimes, what it looks, is all anyone can see.