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The morning after…When you’ve lost the audacity of hope.
Took me a while to even get together the courage to write out my thoughts and feeling on this. Racism, hate, white supremacy, trump…we’re in a sad state of affairs ya’ll.
I had the audacity of hope. Like falling in love, I would have been better off not having known love and I would have been better off not having known hope. Not having known a Black President. Not having felt that after centuries, we were starting to make progress again. Oh how naïve was I. How naïve was millions of people to actually believed that the evil and hate which runs through the veins and churns through the bile of white america had subsided.
At least my expectations of this country wouldn’t have been so high. The fall back to rock bottom bigotry and overt racism terrifies me. I live in this cocoon of Los Angeles County where everyone (for the most part) is progressive and diverse. I forgot how non-metropolitan america really works. Clearly white folks who voted for Obama tried this equality and fairness shit and didn’t like it one bit. Obama was just a blip in history. Won’t be another Black president in my lifetime, if ever. You may not have liked Hilary, but she had the ability to do the damn job. It’s not a popularity contest damn it! Would you want a dude who watched a whole bunch of ER to perform your open heart surgery? No and that is exactly what has happened. People have elected someone to run the country that has only seen it done on West Wing.
It still hasn’t fully sunk all the way in for me. Election Day at my job was so joyful and enthusiastic and optimistic. Then on the day after the breath, the life, the energy had been sucked out of my office. The air was tight, heavy, smoldering. There was hushed pockets of people in the halls throughout the day. Every time someone had to talk to someone about business they had to get the prerequisite WTF just happened off their chest first. When you caught someone’s eye it was the eye of disbelief. The eye of are you as scared as I am? The eye of did that just happen? Now we all walk around half dead. More like Eeyore. Yea, we are a bunch of Eeyores. We living, we interacting, but depressed as hell.
I knew it was going to be close, but not this close. For the second time in my voting life the candidate who won the popular vote did not win the presidency. This does not bode well for anyone who is not white. Poor white folks voting for a man who ain’t gon do nothing for them. And in straight astonishment white women voted against their own interest. According to CNN 53% of white women voted for Trump! How Sway?! I thought ya’ll would have come out for your sisteren, but boy was I wrong. And now I see ya’ll are organizing a Million Woman March. FOR WHAT?! To throw a tantrum over some shit you are directly implicated in. Let’s me know that you are only concerned with white power, not the empowerment of women and girls.
This is the beginning of the end as we know it. Black folks out here praying to God, but for what? Will praying keep someone from calling you a Nigger? Will praying keep someone from harassing you? Will praying keep someone from putting their hands on you in the name of hate? Praying will not temper someone else’s hate and intent to exert their false sense of power over you. You have to keep living. I wanted to stay home so bad the day after the election, but my responsibility to my job and the low-literate adults who’s lives will be changed my our teams’ work pushed me. I had step practice to go to and that was a wonderful distraction. The show must go on. We can’t just have a nervous breakdown over shit that ain’t even happened yet. Black people have lived through all levels of white supremacy and we are able to get through this. Mourn, grieve, cry, be angry, be confused, feel everything there is to feel, but keep meeting your day with purpose. And a new purpose you should be working towards to the empowerment of Black people and the protection of our rights (real and perceived) and U.S. citizens.
It feels surreal. Money can buy you anything, including the highest position in the land.
Now I find myself grappling with how to be a part of the solution. A part of the revolution. I thought maybe my local Democratic Club, the LA County Democratic Party, the Black Los Angeles Young Democrats. Shit, the LA County Democratic Party placed a post-election statement on their website that mentions every possible faction that could be hurt by trump policies, but Black people! Or we have to assume their general statement on anti-discrimination applies to us. Should I join the African Peoples Socialist Party? How can they help me affect change locally? So many questions. I live in LA and am struggling to find the appropriate organization strategizing to protect minorities. That are strategizing to protect me. The Resistance has to be constant and every growing. We have to block him and his cronies at every turn. We cannot make this easy. At every turn there needs to be opposition. Even if it’s opposition just to be opposing. Give them a taste of some of their own bitter medicine that they’ve been doling out to President Obama.
I really want to live through action. I want a seat at the table to be able to craft and influence strategy and policy. I don’t want to just march and protest. I have to find my flock. I’ll let ya’ll know what I come up with. Til next time…Stay Black, Keep Fighting.
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