Rose-Colored Glasses

Russia hacked our election. Obviously. They waged a war against us and won and their double agent is sitting in the Oval Office. We know this.

But we also know that 63 million Americans voted for a man who launched his campaign with “Mexicans are rapists”.

These two things are not incompatible, and yet over and over we see liberals who are so desperate not to remove their rose colored glasses that they will hold on to any conspiracy, no matter how tenuous, rather than accept that this country has a race problem. And the more that Mueller proves that Russia obviously, obviously interfered in our elections, the more liberal whites are able to stick their heads deeper in the sand.

I was doing election protection in Dayton, Ohio when Obama was elected for the first time. At the victory party that night, after the announcement, I said to the nearest person, a white woman, “We just elected our first black president”. She looked at me with shock and said “He’s so much more than that”. I said “No, he’s a black man who was just elected President.” She quickly walked away.

Nothing has changed since that thrilling night in 2008. Even as there is more and more evidence (video evidence to verify what people of color have been shouting for hundreds of years) that we have a problem with race in this country as deep and old as the country itself, even as supporting black women (only on twitter, and only the famous ones) has become as trendy and ultimately unhealthy as pumpkin spice lattes, even as there are brown children in cages, it is still too hard for the people who will very soon no longer be the dominant race in this country to remove the coverings of a lifetime of privilege.

And so, we see, that even after 53% of white female voters and 63% of white men voted for the son of a klansman who has been doing everything he can for at least 50 years to prove that he is a racist, white liberals are still desperate to believe that this is all Russia’s fault.

I suspect that this is because a lot of white liberals are related to Trump voters. This is not something I can relate to. My black and Arab family and one white uncle voted as hard as we could for not-Trump (zero percent of us were Clinton supporters but 100% of us were America supporters). So when I go home I don’t have to deal with the awkward racist uncle and the half of my siblings who are really excited about a wall and the cousins who honestly believe that immigrants are taking their jobs.

I also don’t care.

Your family is full of racists? *Insert shrug emoji*

Your family is pro-baby jails? *Insert extreme shurg emoji*

Your family doesn’t think all Americans should be able to vote? *Insert middle finger emoji 100 times*

There are facts and there are family. The two often do not agree. Choosing to keep your head in the sand and blame the easiest enemy is the postcarding of Democracy- it’s easy, it feels good, you can tell yourself you’re doing something. But at the end of the day, you’re keeping this country exactly where it’s always been.