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The presidential election
Wrap your head around these postelection thoughts — and America’s new reality
The presidential election results of Nov. 8 no doubt came as a surprise to everyone — no matter which side you were on. If you’re still grappling with what happened, how and why it happened, and what to do next — then this postelection commentary is for you.
Here’s What I’m Telling My Brown Son About Trump’s America
By Mira Jacob
“Does Donald Trump hate all brown people?”
“Hate is a strong word.”
“Does he not like brown people?”
“Some.”
“Like Mexicans and Muslims?”
“Yes.”
“What about brown boys like me? Does he not like brown boys like me?”
“What’s not to like about you?” I asked. Then I grabbed you and tickled you and sank my face into your stomach, where you would not see my fear.
Donald Trump Brings a New Age of Political Combat
By Benjamin Wallace Wells
The epicenter of the Trump campaign was not in another country; it was at Trump Tower, at Fifty-sixth and Fifth, the middle of Manhattan. Conservative morality, a diminished force, no longer controls the geography, and the maps of white grievance, of rural disenfranchisement, of anti-élite convictions are less neatly arranged.
The Day After the Election, I Told My Daughter the Truth
By Nicole Chung
I can’t pretend this election hasn’t felt achingly, frighteningly personal. A vote for Trump was always going to be a vote against black Americans, Muslim Americans, immigrant Americans; against women and LGBTQ people and people with disabilities. Since Tuesday night, I have been grappling with the sadness and terror I feel as the parent of two girls who are not white, one of whom has a disability; as a woman, a child of immigrants, and a person in a multiracial, multicultural family. I have enormous privilege, and I am also one of millions of people who now feel less safe here.
How Trump Made Hate Intersectional
By Rembert Browne
More than any speech, debate one-liner, or piece of pseudo-policy, Trump’s campaign slogan of “Make America Great Again” is what won him the presidency. It’s nothing short of evil genius, because it tells the story of what just under half of the voting population wants: to feel in control again. Because “great” really means nothing more than “slow down.”
I Will Teach My Children to Survive the New America
By Manuel Gonzales
Their lives, their survival, their successes — I need to make them understand that these things are inevitable, not because I know them to be inevitable or even because I believe the simple act of believing in your own inevitability will by itself win the day, but because being armed with my own sense of my own inevitability is how I have pushed my way through this world, not so much against the odds, but completely ignorant of the odds, and it seems that they should be also armed.
The End of The Postracial Myth
By Nikole Hannah-Jones
“The Black Lives Matter movement bothered her. Even as an Ivy League-educated, glamorous black couple lived in the White House, masses of black people were blocking highways and staging die-ins in malls, claiming that black people had it so hard. When she voiced her discomfort with that movement, she said, or pointed out that she disagreed with Obama’s policies, some of her more liberal friends on Facebook would call her racist. So, she shut her mouth — and simmered.”
By Bim Adewunmi
In our delightfully quaint cottage, we turned to one another and asked, simultaneously, “What and who the hell are they so scared of?”
Everything, seemed to be the answer then, and again on 8 November. Every damn thing.
And, because even this election needs a dose of levity: [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–IS0XiNdpk&w=560&h=315]