Whether I care to admit it, my Facebook feed serves largely as an echo chamber, as I imagine is the case for many of you. So, as I reeled from the results of Tuesday last, it came as no surprise that most of my Facebook friends did the same. I did, however, notice a key difference in my friends’ responses to the election results:
My White friends were shocked. My Black friends were not.
That’s not to say my Black friends aren’t outraged. They are. But with that outrage seems to have come a much-needed — and very public — confirmation. No more denial. No more obfuscation. No more gaslighting. America has, at last, exposed itself to the world as the racist nation it truly is.
As one of my friends, Casselle, said:
“[Donald Trump’s election] was, for me, a moment of Zen: the cognitive dissonance that crept in with Obama’s election was released. I was reassured that America is what I’ve always known it to be — a place where the expectation of justice is futile and the fight for justice must be eternal.”
I think White progressives (myself included) were diverted by the illusion of progress. Well, perhaps to suggest all progress was illusory is unfair. Progress certainly has been made in this country since 1954. But I think it’s fair to say that the progress isn’t as extensive as we thought. Privilege, echo chambers, and willful ignorance have obstructed our view.
In that vein, I live in North Carolina; ever since the passage of HB2, I’ve seen dissenters post and tweet #ThisIsNotUs. But I think what they really mean is #ThisShouldn’tBeUs. Because this is us. The results of Election 2016 have proven that tenfold.
Between Election Day and November 11th, a span of only five days, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported over 200 incidents of hateful intimidation and harassment. In North Carolina, the Ku Klux Klan has announced a “victory parade” in honor of Trump’s election. And just to be clear, whether Donald Trump and the GOP like that the Klan endorses Trump’s presidency doesn’t matter. His rhetoric resonates with the Klan. If that doesn’t scare you, if that doesn’t make you sick, I’m not sure what will.
To boil the outrage over this election down to who won and who lost is, in my opinion, a gross over-simplification. It’s like pointing to a symptom and calling it the disease. Constant comments from Trump supporters about “sore losers” mystify me. This isn’t poor sportsmanship. People aren’t salty because they lost a game of kickball on the sandlot.
People are grieving because over 60 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. Whether that’s because of or in spite of his xenophobic, racist, misogynistic, and homophobic rhetoric is immaterial. Through their votes, those Americans said they’ll tolerate that hatred, and that’s downright horrific. For some of us, that’s shocking. For others, it just confirms what they already knew.
If you choose to be a silver-liner in these difficult times (and I certainly hope you do), you can take some inspiration from my friend, Glenn, who said:
“I’m only glad he won so we can stop pretending now. America showed its real face for the first time in a long time. Trump’s presidency is legitimate, distinctly American in fact…
We didn’t want our brothers jailed, and we said it together. We saw ourselves shot in those brutalized by police, and we marched. We refused to see our cis and trans sisters harassed, and we made it known. We recognized the thinly veiled bigotry in having a bathroom assignment, and we called bullshit. This was the problem. The fight. The audacity to demur.
They came from their cracks and corners because we weren’t the nice little others. We were too black, too queer, too Muslim, too intellectual, too woman for them to ignore this time. Trump’s supporters just want the fight to stop. What they don’t know is that this is not A civil rights movement. It is THE civil rights movement, and the fight has only just begun.”
I don’t think a white person can ever be woke, but you can always be waking up. And if you aren’t waking up after this election, I’m afraid you may sleep forever. But if you are waking, I say, “Good for you, my friend. Now, you better get to work.”
