Finally, the election is over. But, for some, the results have become very hard to swallow. The Facebook posts that incited political debates amongst friends and family over the last two years have yet to end and some might say that they have become even more prevalent on their “news feed”. Some people have even taken to the streets to protest the results, which has now resulted in conversation and debate all over the news and media as to whether or not these protests are justified. All of this perceived chaos has left many to wonder, why are people so upset about the election? I decided to go all over campus and see if a few students could tell me why they were upset.
Here’s what Chayla Park, (a sophomore Biology major from Fayetteville, Georgia), Peyton Edmond, (a junior Accounting major from Irmo, South Carolina), and Shelly Restificar (a junior Biology major from Rock Hill, South Carolina) had to say:
The campaigning for the election started way back in 2015. Do you mind telling me who you were pulling for during the primaries?
Shelly: I was with Bernie.
Chayla: Yeah, I was with Bernie. “Feelin’ the Bern”.
Peyton: I was with Hillary.
Shelly and Chayla, why did you two support Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton?
Chayla: I just agreed with most of what he was saying and his policies. I feel like he was looking out for the younger generation, our generation—college students. He just appealed to that base, as well as me.
Shelly: I agree with what Chayla said. I feel like he was more for the people than the other candidates were. It did feel like he was looking out for the younger generation more [than the other candidates]. He was preparing us more for the years to come, starting from the ground up, allowing us to have a more solid foundation as we grow into mature adults, and it didn’t feel like the other candidates offered that as much as he did. Maybe Hillary did later on in the campaign when she started to adopt more of Bernie’s stances and, in turn, some of his audience. But obviously, that wasn’t enough.
Once she won the nomination, was it easy for you to get behind and support Hillary Clinton?
Chayla: Yes.
Shelly: I mean, it made me sad that it wasn’t Bernie who was going to represent us, but I also understood that by not voting or giving up our vote to a Third Party, we would essentially be taking away votes from the Democratic Party and giving them to Trump. So, I understood that it had to be Hillary.
Peyton, why did you support Clinton from the beginning?
Peyton: She was familiar to me and my household. My parents supported her; particularly, my mom supported her. So, I just grew up learning what they liked about her. I was opposed to the Republican Party, even though I am conservative and grew up conservative. I liked Bernie, but I didn’t particularly agree with everything he said. I believe in hard work and, from my perspective, it sounded like a lot of free stuff like free college education. Healthcare, which I do believe should be universal, I agree with that. But for someone who works hard day to day and hearing stuff that would be considered “free”—I didn’t agree with that.
But you all, at the end of the day, were pulling for Clinton. So, going into election night, did you feel certain that Hillary was going to be the next President of the United States?
Shelly: Oh, yeah. Shout out to social media.
Chayla: Yeah.
Peyton: At first, when I starting seeing the returns, Trump started off stronger than she did. I was remaining hopeful, I was thinking she might make a comeback. But I started off wary.
Shelly: When I started seeing some of the Midwest turning red, that’s when I really lost hope.
Chayla: It didn’t hit me until Trump was in the 200’s that he was going to win.
Shelly: Once I saw that Clinton had won California, and they were still only at a tie, I thought it was bad.
Peyton: When he got Michigan, it was bad.
Shelly: When he got Pennsylvania, it was bad.
Peyton: Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio; when he got those states, it changed everything.
What did it feel like to watch your candidate lose the election?
Peyton: It was horrible. It wasn’t because Hillary had lost; it was about who had won.
Shelly: Yeah, I could have dealt with Hillary losing. It was the fact of who had won and knowing the consequences. Then, seeing everything in the morning and having my concerns be affirmed in the things that were already starting to happen.
You say it had less to do with Hillary losing and had more to do with Trump winning. Why does it bother you so much that he had won?
Peyton: It bothers me, because I’ve only come across one person who could tell me why he supports Trump and what he stands for. Everyone else I’ve talked to can’t tell me what Trump can offer. Just listening to the media, and I understand the media is biased, he’s been running off of bigotry. I’ve heard “You know, Obama caused racism,” but you shouldn’t try to benefit off of racism. Even if we already are divided, you shouldn’t thrive off of that and make us even more divided. I feel like that’s what Trump did to get votes.
Shelly: I can’t believe that anyone could say that Obama caused racism. That is mind blowing. But the reason I was upset is that I was very concerned for all of my minority friends and even my family.
Chayla: It’s just that so many of these things that Trump is saying are appealing to racists. It’s just difficult to think about how at least half of your country has been able to relate to what he has said and his ideals. It’s your friends, your family, people you would have trusted with your life. People who are making this conscious decision to get behind this kind of person.
Shelly: Even if they, themselves, say that they’re not racist and don’t carry out racist acts, you voted for him. I mean, everyone saw the kind of attitude that his rallies encouraged—the kind of attitude that his supporters took on. So, by putting a man like that in power, you have just validated everything that Trump and his supporters have said as well as the acts of bigotry and horrible discrimination. It just normalized it. I have had so many encounters with people of other minorities that have told me about things that they have already experienced. It’s just horrible.
What has it been like, for you, to have friends or family members that supported Trump?
Chayla: Honestly, it feels like a sort of betrayal.
Shelly: It hurts, because it feels like they didn’t take your safety into consideration. There are people facing horrible family pains and fears.
Peyton: I’ve met more Trump supporters at Brenau than at home and it doesn’t necessarily surprise me that the people who supported him did support him. It’s just mind blowing to see how many uneducated people there are. I recently talked to one person and she tried to tell me that she had experienced “reverse racism”. And I had to try to tell that person that you can experience racism, but it doesn’t impact you because you are in the majority. So, when we talk about racial issues, it’s amazing how uneducated people are. Then, on top of that, to see how willing they are to stay uneducated…
Chayla: They don’t want to hear it.
Shelly: I think they don’t want to feel like they’re not oppressed.
Peyton: They don’t want to believe that racism exists and that the same people are still being oppressed.
Shelly: And they don’t want to believe that they’re helping carry out oppression. I’ve had white friends that have told me that they’ve been oppressed too, but it’s not to the same degree of what people of minorities experience.
Peyton: I think it lies in the reparations that have been paid to the people who were oppressed—the minorities. The majority feels victimized because of those reparations. I actually had to hear, “Well, y’all get job opportunities.” Well, it was because we were being discriminated against because of the color of our skin, not because of what we knew.
Shelly: It [Affirmative Action] is in place to compensate for the stereotypes in place that would prevent you from getting jobs. That is why it is there. It is because society systematically oppresses minorities.
Chayla: It’s there to keep things fair.
Shelly: Because of the way I look, out of the three of us, I would be more likely to get a job. That’s unfair.
What about Trump’s positions offend you? What has he done to encourage racism?
Peyton: When he first came out saying that Mexicans were rapists, that was the first thing [that offended me]. You shouldn’t generalize a body of people. I’m black, I don’t want to be generalized. When it comes to police brutality and I’ve had to hear, “he was a thug”—that’s generalizing black people. I mean, not just black people, that’s generalizing all minorities in America. That was his first strike. His second strike is that he is a true liar. Alright, they call Hillary a liar, but he is a true liar because once he became the president-elect, he started to take back the things he said. He said, “stop the violence,” but he was inciting the violence during the campaign. No, that’s not okay. That’s a liar.
Shelly: What really made me uncomfortable was that he was putting a fear of minorities into the majority. When you say, “Mexicans are rapists”, you’re putting a fear into peoples’ hearts that Mexicans are rapists. And we know that fear incites aggression. So, when you make people afraid of a certain group of people, you are giving them reason to hurt members of that group. And they’re going to get angry and they’re going to fight back. You can’t expect someone to lie down and take it.
Peyton: To be completely honest, I’ll just come out and say it, I think a lot of white America already had that fear. I’ve heard white people say that we—ethnic people—are taking over. So, when he says those things about Mexicans, he is validating how some people already feel. Therefore, to them, they now have a reason to act hateful.
Are you scared of Trump?
Shelly: I’m afraid of most of the people who voted for Trump.
Peyton: I’m not scared of Trump. The people who supported him, that’s who I feel like I need to watch out for, because they’re the ones who are vandalizing cars and writing “n****r” and other racial slurs.
Chayla: For me, I kind of have to be afraid of every aspect of it. Again, the people who voted for him, they’re the ones who can actually carry some of this stuff out. But then you have to think about how he’s got the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the only branch Trump doesn’t have is the judicial—for now. So, it’s troubling that he has all of these people behind him. His opportunities seem to be almost endless now.
Peyton: To be honest, I think the house is still divided, because a lot of Republicans didn’t like him when he became the nominee. They didn’t want to back him, but they couldn’t not back him.
Shelly: I think it’s plausible that they didn’t back him because they wanted a different person to be the nominee, but they’ll oppose the Democrats simply to oppose the Democrats. So, we’re still divided. Now, we’re in thirds. Republicans who don’t support Trump, Republicans who do, and then the Democrats.
Peyton: I think now, more than ever, you just have to believe in the system of checks-and-balances.
Shelly: But do checks-and-balances apply when most of the government is red? Because Republicans will still do anything to oppose the Democrats, I feel. Simply because they, the Republicans, feel like they have something to prove.
As the news that Trump is going to be our next president starts to settle in, there have been protests in the streets across the country. A lot of people, particularly conservatives, don’t understand why people feel the need to protest this. What do you think about the protests?
Chayla: I understand why people are protesting. You know, you want it to be broadcast that you’re upset and what your disappointments and fears are. I’m all for freedom of speech and freedom of protest, but I don’t think there’s much that you can change right now. Air your grievances, protest—it’s your right. I’m not saying they shouldn’t. I’m not saying it’s a waste of time. I’m just saying that there’s not much we can do as far as changing the outcome of the election.
Shelly: I would support the protests. Obviously, I don’t want anyone to get hurt and I really don’t appreciate vandalism of property. One of my professors once told me, “When people feel like they haven’t been listened to, they have to do things to be heard and seen”. And I understand that wholeheartedly. Think about how it would be like if we didn’t speak about our grievances or how upset we were. Would the aggression against minorities then escalate? But it’s also possible that it’s being aggravated by the protests; I get that, I do. But, in some ways, I think it’s people’s way of saying that it’s not okay and that they won’t stand for this. I can appreciate that.
So, what do you say to people who say that election is over and it’s time to get behind Trump, because he’s the next POTUS?
Chayla: Yeah, the election is over. Yeah, he is our next president, but there’s freedom of speech for a reason. Everybody can air their grievances; everybody can speak their mind. This is their way of basically showing all of America that they’re not just going to take it lying down.
A lot of people—including yourselves—thought that Trump said things that shouldn’t have been said. You thought that what he said wasn’t okay. Your friends who voted for Trump probably heard what he said as well. Why do you think they still stuck with him?
Shelly: I don’t think they thought it would affect them like it would affect minorities.
Peyton: I think a lot of the people who grew up in Republican households were going to vote Republican regardless, simply because that’s what they know. You don’t stray from what you know. But, in my case, if someone was spewing hate speech in the Democratic party, I would vote Republican.
Chayla: I think a lot of it was people voting Republican so they wouldn’t vote Democratic.
Well, surely you told your friends how you felt. Do you think that even though you told them that Trump was spewing hate speech and that you felt offended, that they voted Republican just because they didn’t want to vote Democratic?
Shelly: I think they don’t want to admit that by voting red, they voted for bigotry this time.
Chayla: We are a women’s college and we’ve heard Trump say that he grabs women by their genitals and they still got behind him. How do you hear that, as a female, and still stick with him?
Peyton: I’ve heard people say that he doesn’t mean that and that he’s just saying things. They just make excuses for him. I think this election came down to who they hated more. Maybe you’re not racist, but you hated Hillary more than you hated Trump. So, that’s who you voted for.
Shelly: I feel like a lot of people whot voted for Trump just really lack empathy. There’s a very significant difference between sympathy and empathy. Most people have sympathy, but very few have the ability to be empathetic. I don’t think that most people who voted for Trump could look their minority friends in the eye and say that they really thought about what it would be like to be them, or about their family, or about what kind of new obstacles they would have to overcome. I don’t think they were capable of putting themselves in other people’s shoes and thinking about the pains they would feel and the true fears that they had.
Peyton: I think the word “friend” needs to be redefined. You can have a white friend who calls you “friend”, but when it comes down to stuff like this and they voted for Trump—this person might not really be your friend, because they’re with you, but they can’t relate to anything about you. I feel like it’s important to be able to relate to one another in a friendship.
Chayla: The only way I can really cope with my friends voting for Trump is to just think they voted for him to secure their own future and not the future of their minority friends or any person of color who they know.
Did the results of the election change how you see America?
Shelly: Yes, what a disappointment. I’ve lost a lot of faith in humanity and that makes me very sad, because I’ve always had a very good outlook about the world and people.
Peyton: The people who said that they were going to vote didn’t vote. People came out of the woodwork for Trump. People who said they weren’t going to vote for Trump, voted for Trump. Some people didn’t vote because Bernie [Sanders] wasn’t on the ballot. In Arizona, Gary Johnson had more votes than Hillary and that was a protest vote. *
A lot of people expressed that they were tired of being called racist, sexist, etc. Some have even expressed that they voted for Trump because of that. What do you say to those people?
Peyton: If you’re tired of that, then you shouldn’t have voted for someone who spewed out racist things and bigotry because you’re going to be grouped as a racist by being associated with Trump.
Shelly: If you’re not against someone, then you might as well be with them. If you’re just passively allowing someone to be racist, you are encouraging the problem. So, by voting for Trump, even if you’re not overtly racist or carrying out racist acts, you are allowing for racism to occur, grow, and expand. You did that. So, yes, that’s why you’re being called a racist and a bigot.
A lot of people have mentioned that Trump is, after all, one person. A lot of his policies are going to end up being influenced and molded by the people in Republican leadership and his administration. Does that comfort you at all?
Chayla: No, because the policies being pushed by the people, who are considered candidates for his cabinet, are ridiculous and inhumane. They’re talking about enforcing a Muslim registry.
Shelly: Well, I don’t want to be electrocuted. Mike Pence is very extreme. He believes in conversion therapy for homosexuals. Literally, that is the idea of putting someone through shock therapy until they adopt a mental illness to the point where they reject everything they are attracted to. Tell me that isn’t abusive. That is horribly crippling, especially for youths. You are training them to hate themselves through mutilation and it’s horrible.
Peyton: Apparently, Trump is trying to appoint his family members to high level positions in the White House. I don’t agree with that. The country is not your family business.
Last question: What do you think, in your life, could change because of the election?
Chayla: I think we’re all going to be concerned for the safety of our family and friends, because of the radical Trump supporters saying demeaning things. I’m worried about the financial stability of my family also.
Shelly: I’m really concerned as a gay colored female. I would really question my safety if I was alone, walking down the street, and someone were to see I was dressing “gay”. I’m worried that they would think that they could change that—me being gay. I would be very concerned for my safety. I wasn’t worried before, but now I am, because people think that it is in their power to do things to other people. In truth, I’m more concerned for other minority groups than my own. I’m more concerned for Latinos, Muslims, and Blacks. I’m especially concerned for Muslims, because they’re such a small group and they have so few people who are willing to fight for them.
Peyton: Finances are probably number one for me. I want to be able to get out of debt—not drown in it. Dealing with racism is number two. I’m from Irmo, South Carolina. I’ve dealt with racism before, it’s nothing new. But, at the same time, I’ve been lucky enough to not deal with it all the time. I’m worried that will change.
*The claim that Gary Johnson obtained more votes than Hillary Clinton in the state of Arizona is untrue. While Trump did win Arizona with 49% of the vote, Clinton garnered almost 46% (Gary Johnson only received 4%). Johnson performed best in his home state of New Mexico, where he received 9% of the vote; Clinton’s 48% beat Trump’s 40%.