Day 2 in Trump’s America

Yesterday I noticed a trend: terrible things were happening at an alarming and visible rate all around America to people of color, people in the LGBTQ community, and women. These citizens and neighbors of ours were already affected by Donald Trump’s xenophobic and misogynist rhetoric even before he was elected. But with him winning, it seemed that the obscene, awful things we heard yelled for more than a year at his rallies were moving out of the gymnasiums and airport hangars and into the wide open. Muslims were attacked, hate speech was scrawled across campus buildings. It was bad.

At the time I saw these incidents compound, no one had yet put them in one place where they could all be seen for what they were. So I did. I tried to stick to the ones verified by local newspapers and police departments and universities. I didn’t find all of them, and I wasn’t trying to. (I also didn’t search for the “other side,” or link that YouTube video of a man being beaten for being a Trump supporter that people angry about my post have been spamming the comments with on Facebook. I get it. It’s not a one-way problem.) I just wanted to get the ball rolling on this. Soon enough, that happened — Quartz, The Washington Post, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Shaun King, Fusion, and more are on the case.

I could do the same today. Lord knows it’s still happening. But there are more dedicated people with better voices at more dedicated places with more dedicated resources handling it now. Instead, on Day 2, I want to say a few things:

1. First, thank you to all the people who have reached out, either here on Medium, or via email, or via Twitter — wherever. Not thanks in the sense that I’m happy at the things that you’ve come across, but thanks in the sense that you felt compelled to connect and share and try to make things better. We need to harness that spirit going forward, and we also need to figure out how to make more people understand it.
2. I shouldn’t have called it “Trump’s America,” and so this is the last time I will. It’s our America. He works for us. Remember that. No matter who you are, whether you supported him, or what his presidency means to you. He. Works. For. Us. There are layers of abstraction between you and him, and those layers are especially thick if you’re a Democrat or lean to the left. But the president is employed by the people. We need to remind ourselves of that today. And we need to remind him of that for the next four years.
3. Today, that post went viral. It just cracked 1,000,000 views and it’s still growing. For the first 15 hours or so, the reactions were slow but steady, and they tended to be ones of shock, horror, fear, sadness, or a mix of all four. But when it really started spreading this afternoon, the responses and comments took one of three shapes:

• These were hoax incidents.
• These were done by leftists/Democrats/hillghazi supporters/whatever.
• Sure these happened but look at this Trump supporter being subjected to X.

With respect to the first two, don’t cry hoax unless you have evidence. [UPDATE: Hey, look, one apparently was. I’ve updated both posts.] I at the very least tried to find ones that had some sort of trail, even if the local papers or universities hadn’t determined exactly who pulled it off. I may not know who did them, but I believe they are real and I’d hope you can understand why I side with the people who have actually been victims in all of this. They deserve the benefit of the doubt all the time, yours and mine, and they especially deserve the benefit of the doubt that these are attacks meant to frighten or harm them.

That last point is where we have to start taking the next step forward. Any time there is a big divide like this, there will of course be overreactions on both sides. But Trump supporters, I beg you to try and understand the imbalance that exists here. Read some of the things that people of color are writing about this election and how it makes them feel — then come talk to me. Better yet, go talk to them.

The responses that didn’t fall into those three categories wound up sounding something like “you’re saying all Trump supporters are racists but…” So hear me out. I agree with that, even if two days it’s through gritted teeth. But you have to consider that he is still a racist. If we want to get literal about it, he was once sued by the Justice Department because of racial discrimination.

More importantly though, if you want to argue that not all Trump supporters are racist, the burden is on you to prove that out. That means denouncing things like the stuff we saw happen yesterday and continue to see today. That means not defaulting to calling them hoaxes and walking away, but helping everyone find out who actually committed these crimes. That means putting your money where your fucking mouth is and supporting the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, or at the very least lending your hand or ears or WHATEVER YOU CAN to the people who spend every day in this country at a disadvantage. And if you’re one of those people and you’re a Trump supporter, tell the people around you what it’s like. It might not be easy, but nothing is these days.