In the last few days, my social media feeds are filled with sadness, anxiety, and fear. And one of the most common responses I see to the grief or in response to the grieving that many are going through after Trump’s election sounds something like this:
Don’t worry. Trump isn’t even president until January. And there are checks and balances to make sure he can’t do the things you are afraid of. And he is sounding more measured, maybe he won’t be as bad as he seems!
I am happy that the founders of this country built in checks and balances. That the president can’t just dictate policy and unilaterally drive the car off the road, so to speak. This is true even when his party holds both houses of Congress. Trump ran as a Republican, but even in victory the GOP has a lot of internal chaos going on, so maybe his reckless promises will be tempered into something truly good. Many politicians have expressed their commitment to work with him on common goals, including Bernie Sanders whose statement shows that they both were running campaigns that were all about fighting for an often overlooked segment of society.
I am happy that Trump is already sounding a bit more conciliatory. It might be that his even tempered remarks are a product of his handlers, instead of a display of a different kind of Trump. But I don’t really care either way. Conciliatory is good, and I hope it keeps up (with actions to back up the rhetoric).
But I think the well intentioned encouragements to those who are afraid to just “wait and see” are missing what people are actually afraid of.
On one hand, there is a fear of what President Trump and the GOP congress will do in the new year (and there are probably a mix of real and overblown concerns there). On the other hand, there is fear of what people, emboldened by the results of the election, are going to do, and have already done.
During the campaign there was plenty of talk about whether or not Donald Trump was “racist.” Whether or not the endorsement from the KKK was proof. Whether the lawsuit against him in the 70s about discriminatory housing practices showed a history of discrimination. Whether any current actions by him proved that he wasn’t racist after all. What he meant when he said “rapists.” These things matter, but they matter largely in terms of the first fear (what is he going to do as president). We’ll see how that shapes out, and I pray that he really does strive to be everyone’s president, and doesn’t govern from a place of prejudice.
But in the meantime, this is happening. And this. I’ve heard of minority students at Christian colleges being spit on. Of middle schoolers chanting “build a wall” to their hispanic peers. These are not isolated incidents. They are a pattern in which people of colour and women and LGBTQ people are being harassed and assaulted under the banner of the new president-elect. A man who did not tell his supporters to stop their violence during his campaign, and has yet to tell people to stop it now.
I know that there are also incidents in which Trump supporters are being attacked as well. Those are also inexcusable. But I think it is important to recognize that one response generally comes from a feeling of powerlessness, and the other comes from a a feeling of power. One involves people who are angry and scared that they are about to be marginalized; who are angry at people who (they feel) enabled the marginalization. The other is from people who feel like they are now allowed to marginalize. Free to speak formerly unspeakable, hateful things in the open. We are now seeing in the open what minority groups have been saying for a long time: that racism is alive and well in American society. But right now it feels like it has had its social stigma removed.
Don’t mistake my words as lumping any group of people together. I don’t think all Trump voters are spray painting their neighbor’s cars with swastikas and racial slurs. And this isn’t a condemnation of a region or class. This is happening across geographic and socio-economic boundaries. But some people now feel like they are living in a new America in which the new president will establish white male supremacy. They are behaving in a way that prepares and expects that new reality. And it is happening all across the country, and the president-elect has been silent.
So I will not be telling women, people of color, immigrants, muslims, or LGBTQ people to simply not be afraid. At least not right away. I will not jump to asserting God’s sovereignty over everything. Grief deserves its place. Even Job’s friends, who believed his calamity was his own fault, sat with him for seven days to grieve. God is in control, and I pray that those who are afraid put their trust in Him. But trusting in God doesn’t mean denying the peril that you are in.
I don’t know what I can do. The worst parts of me want to simply write a blog post, seek someone to bestow upon me the title of “woke,” so I can feel holier than thou. But that won’t do any good. So I’ll be speaking out when I can. I’ll be looking for ways to effect change in my own neighborhood.
And I’ll be praying. I pray that those who voted for Trump as a ‘lesser evil’ will join me in asking him to denounce the acts that people carry out in his name. I can say that I’ll use my voice however I can to say that because I believe everyone is made in the image of God, no one should have to walk around in fear. I pray that everyone takes their fear and looks to God for help, but I know that one of the ways that God helps is through His Church. And so I pray that my fellow Christians would not tell anyone to simply not be afraid, but to show them the love of God who comforts the afflicted.
*Update: November 15, 2016 – In an interview over the weekend, Trump told his supporters to “stop it”. You can get the context and full info here. My take: this is an insufficient response. He replied to a question asked of him in an interview, and acted surprised that the problem was there in the first place. And the tone sounded like how I tell my son to stop climbing on the couch. Not how you call out people from white supremacy. The appointment of Steve Bannon as strategist only exacerbates the problem. When a country is experiencing a surge in hate crimes, the president ought not to wait for 60 minutes to ask him about it. He should be leading the charge for calling this stuff out. And since he isn’t (and it doesn’t seem likely that he will), the church now has a responsibility to step in and stand next to people who live in fear of oppression.
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