I have, over the years, been a target of hate. I know what it feels like to live with the knowledge that simply because of the color of my skin and the texture of my hair, someone feels free to spit on me, curse at me, call out my name, and wish me dead. That, from their perspective, my elimination would benefit the common good for “white” people.
I have lived with the knowledge that my gender has also made me a target for rape, abuse, and the milder (but no less damaging) dismissing of my intellectual capacity. From their perspective, my ovaries are somehow linked to my brain’s inability to function at the same level as those of persons who can hoist a penis.
I learned these things very early in my life. My parents helped me to negotiate this knowledge, to accept that there are some very sick and hateful people in the world I face each day, and that I would need to find ways to protect myself from the irreparable harm they, and their beliefs, were attempting to do to my psyche, my spirit, my sense of self-worth, and my bodily integrity.
My parents gave me armor. Education. They helped me gird myself with courage, pride, and an indomitable will to fight back. They armed me with the weapon of truth to fight against the fear.
When I am faced with the almost daily judgment of me, my thoughts, my presence as “less than,” as someone to be spoken at and talked down to, simply because that other person automatically sees me that way, through the lens of the way they were raised to think and perceive, I bristle. I tighten up my armor, pull down the visor of my brain helmet, and prepare to fight. These days, words are my weapons. Weapons in a war against hate—not weapons used to escalate hatreds.
I understand the “why” of it all—the historical, political, and socioeconomic implications of hate; however, that clarity of thought does not ever take away the pain, the hurt, and yes, the anger that simmers beneath surface calm and rationality. I tamp down the anger. Rage blocks coherent communication. Writing here requires me to communicate.
And so, I write again about my views, feelings, and conclusions about the world of politics and culture we all experience differently. Once again I feel forced to confront the big, ugly, vile, and dangerous bigot whose presence we cannot escape, or ignore—Donald Trump.
He is a danger to me and mine. A clear and present danger. Get him off of Twitter, out of the White House, and into a jail cell.
As a citizen of the segment of our population defined as “left” by both adherents and opponents, I have too often assumed that being part of that broad demographic would ensure unanimity of purpose, goal, and vision.
Far too often, I forget that that broad label, often nowadays replaced by “progressive” (though in my younger years we were “radicals” or “revolutionaries”), does not always automatically include many of us who are both black and female. I won’t use the amorphous term “women of color” here, because its use often obfuscates the discussion of specific issues. When I talk of my stance, my positions on Trump and Democratic Party efforts to remove him, by vote, by impeachment or indictment, I am speaking through my lens of black-womanness. I am grouped into, for quantitative purposes of analysis and polling, the category that has, over several decades, turned out in force to help get Democrats (most of whom have been white, and most often male) into seats of electoral power.
We (that demographic variable bunch) have rarely been given credit for, or, more importantly, reaped rewards for our efforts. We saw some progress made along those lines as we inched forward under the Obama administration, while we gloried in the black-first-ladyness of Michelle, because she became the living symbol of our mothers and grandmothers and aunties and nieces.
We rallied to the side of Hillary Clinton in the last election. Those critics who dubbed us racist for voting for Barack simply because he was black often fail to note that we turned out for Hillary in very high numbers, and last time I looked, she’s a white lady.
But I digress.
We now have a race against Trump. Trump the vile. Trump the racist. Trump the xenophobe. Trump the illiterate. Trump the science and climate denier. Trump the genocider.
Trump who has specifically targeted us, and those black women we see as us who have achieved.
We are not blind to his massive efforts to undo every damn drop of good brought to us (via our own efforts) by “our’” POTUS, Barack Hussein Obama.
We have watched him openly target, demean, and excoriate black women we admire and honor. We know he has put their lives at risk. He has made them targets.
We know what it is to wake up to that daily fear of crazy racist white people who want us dead. Us calling Congresswoman Maxine Waters “Auntie Maxine” is no accident. We all have a Maxine in our family. The threats she receives are deadly serious—to us.
Those of us who are raising children, nurturing grandbabies and other younguns are living with the daily horror that we have a hard time explaining to them. From our POV, the white people of the United States of America elected a racist, threatening lunatic to the highest office in this land who, with zero filters and no shame, tweets daily toward our destruction. A POTUS who rallies with slime, the Klan, and open Nazis.
When we talk of this, in mixed company, we are often shut down. We are told our speaking truth is “racist.” We get hammered, with deflections like, “not all white people,” the same way we hear “not all police” after another one of our people is assassinated by cop—the most recent example is Atatiana Jefferson. We know, all too well, that there are no safe spaces for black people.
We, who come from a tradition of voting like clockwork, are struggling to enforce that tradition with our younger folks, who are mightily disheartened.
We see the media normalize Trump. Every damn day. Pundits and journalists pontificate and breathlessly treat every tweet from his keyboard as if this presidency is legitimate.
Ain’t nothing normal about his insane hatefests.
We see the one black woman in the race stand up to shut that racist tweeter down, and get mocked and policed by our so-called allies. We see the brother in the race support her.
We see her, our brother, and our Latino brother who was part of the Obama administration not only raise issues that affect us, but speak from experience. They don’t have to suddenly “work hard to build ties to our community.” They are part of it.
We see.
This seeing may not be seen by you who live by polls.
What we see and feel may not even be reflected in who we vote for.
We want Trump gone—yesterday.
Get his ass off of Twitter, off of televised Klan rallies, out of office, and, hopefully, in jail one day.
We see. We dream.
We awake to another day in the racist U.S.A.