On Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, the majority of voters in the United States of America voted for Hillary Clinton. However, because of our flawed Electoral College, Donald Trump will become the next president. With the reality that an openly misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic and climate change-denying bigot will hold the highest office in this land, with the support of a Republican-controlled Congress and Republican-controlled state governments all around the country settling in, some people began to express their reactions.
Within the NC State community, Muslim students, Native students, undocumented students, LGBTQ students, gender nonconforming students, students of color and women-identified students began to express their genuine fear and understandable feelings of devastation. As these emotions spilled out into campus spaces, social media forums and interpersonal conversations, there has been a spectrum of responses ranging from calling people “crybabies” to offering support to those who feel afraid.
It is a privilege to have voted for Donald Trump without fear of deportation under his leadership. It is a privilege to have voted for Donald Trump without fear of experiencing another sexual assault by someone who is simply following the president’s example. It is a privilege to have voted for Donald Trump without fear of the implications of an anti-choice president on uterus-bearing people who might lose access to life-saving reproductive health care. Not only was there a long list of privileges associated with voting for this man, but there is also a long list of privileges associated with telling people who are experiencing fear because of his victory to be okay and to unify with those who supported him.
Asking someone who has been personally sacrificed during Trump’s campaign to unite with the people that voted this man into office is asking people of color to unite with white supremacy, LGBTQ people to unite with homophobia, biphobia, transphobia and queerphobia, women to unite with patriarchy, Muslims to unite with Islamophobia, and so on. Calling for unity in 2017 when this country was founded on violence against Native people is American hypocrisy at its finest.
Let’s discuss the privilege of asking people to just get along. Let’s discuss the indifference of someone so unaffected by a person or a decision that they can stand by and apathetically observe those most affected fight for their lives. Let’s discuss how a person can be so privileged that the first thing they say to someone mourning the decisions that bigots have recently made is to try to see their side. These folks betray a false equivalency between talking about human suffering and any other casual conversation topic. They show that even when the stakes are raised to life or death levels for others, they have the privilege to sit on the sidelines. They indicate that keeping up the appearance of politeness and civility are far more important than exposing bigotry.
They indicate that niceness overrides the anger of the oppressed; that seeming is far more important than being; that if you face electroshock therapy because you are gay, or are treated as a threat because of your religion, or are bullied because of your race or ethnicity, or are sexually assaulted, your voice begins and ends in the confines of tone policing; that everyone must consider the opinions of others, even when that opinion necessitates that you have no rights, no vote, no voice; that if marginalized groups cannot lower their voices and modulate their messages with qualifiers and humbleness in the face of covert oppression, they will not be heard, and that if they are too loud, too angry and too aggressive, then the privileged are justified in silencing them.
Individuals with dominant identities, unaware of the realities of oppression, are the most dangerous group in America. Fox News says that protesters, “thugs” and entitled liberal millennials are the true danger, but make no mistake. Disruption, contrary to the American narrative of peaceful protest in the face of outright denial of justice, is not the true evil of 2016. It is the ease with which ordinary people choose to silently rationalize fascism, sexual predation, extreme dishonesty and blatant discrimination that is truly, insidiously toxic.
