except perhaps this: that now it would become harder for white liberals to ignore what even they had often ignored previously. It would now become more difficult to labor under the impression that race was a secondary issue in American life. Hopefully, it would also become apparent to more whites—especially those proclaiming their progressivism—why all liberal and/or left organizing must be antiracist and challenge the politics of prejudice head-on. Trump has proven that there can be no dancing around the edges of the issue. The only way out is through, as the saying goes.
This section begins with essays written in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s 2016 victory and inauguration, followed by pieces that document the abundant evidence of Trump’s racism both in rhetoric and in action. Throughout, I explore the way he has deployed bigotry cynically to gain and maintain political power, and how his presidency has revealed an underlying sickness at the heart of the American experiment.
By the time this volume is released, Donald Trump will either have been reelected or have returned to private life; but whatever the case, the damage Trumpism will have done to the fabric of the nation will continue on. And the deep-seated fissures that it did not create, but which it has uncovered for millions to see, will continue to grow unless we commit to a new and different way of being.
DISCOVERING THE LIGHT IN
DARKNESS DONALD TRUMP AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICA
One discovers the light in darkness. That is what darkness is for. But everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith.…I know we often lose…and how often one feels that one cannot start again. And yet, on pain of death, one can never remain where one is [for] the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.… The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. And the moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
—JAMES BALDWIN, “NOTHING PERSONAL,” 1964
IWISH THERE WERE some way to spin this, to soften the sharp edges of these blades slicing into the connective tissue of our nation, but there is not. There is only the scythe, ripping collective flesh and tendon, swung by a deranged reaper and those who saw fit to hand him the tools with which to do such damage.
I wish there were some way to blink really hard, like I used to do as a child when trapped in a nightmare, thereby finding release from the clutches of whatever monster was in hot pursuit. Sadly, this escape route began to fail me right around the time I discovered that some monsters are real, and that some disasters must simply be faced.
There is no upside, no way to interpret what has happened but as a crushing defeat for the notion of multiracial and multicultural democracy, religious pluralism, sex and gender equity, and whatever advances have been achieved regarding those things. To suggest that everything will be okay is to traffic in empty platitudes, the veracity of which we won’t know for some time, but whose accuracy at present should be considered less promising than the projections of pollsters on election night. It will not be okay, possibly for a long while.
So first, remember to breathe.
Because although this moment offers little upon which those committed to justice can hang our hats, there is, per Baldwin, a light in the darkness. It is our job to find it, to seek it out as if our lives depended on it, because they do.
As we look, let us acknowledge that it hurts to see a nation elevate someone to the presidency so lacking in knowledge, so incurious about the world, so marinated in the politics of revenge, and hostile to a large part of humanity. And to elect a man who would boast of sexually assaulting women, encourage supporters to attack protesters and offer to pay their legal bills when they do, and shut the door to immigrants seeking a better life, is stomach-churning.
So first, remember to breathe.
Because you are needed. Mourning is fine for a moment. Tears are also acceptable. But at some point soon, in place of the tears, we must substitute courage.
It won’t be easy, but nothing worth having is, so if democracy is worth having, we’ll have to fight for it. Truthfully, we didn’t have a genuine democracy before Donald Trump. And so the situation today is much like it was on Monday, and last week and last year. Yes, Trump represents a more extreme iteration of all the pathological tendencies long embedded in the culture. But the fight, in terms of direction and focus, is no different than it ever was.
At least now the veil has been lifted, revealing to all white folks who are willing to see what people of color already knew: that racial division and suspicion have always been the most potent fertilizers in U.S. politics. In every generation, every bit of progress for the black and brown has faced a resounding pushback—what Van Jones called “whitelash” on election night. So we ought not be surprised that as the United States moves toward a more multiracial tomorrow, some would take that as their cue to revisit this peculiar pastime.
Read Carol Anderson’s White Rage and you’ll see that Trump and Trumpism are but the latest manifestations of a phenomenon as old as the republic itself. When enslavement ended and Reconstruction offered hope to those who had been recently owned as property, whitelash drove blacks back into virtual bondage with Black Codes and Jim Crow. And with the rope, from which thousands swung: strange fruit. But take note, black people survived, even as some black persons did not. And they are still here, unbowed, unbroken, unapologetic, and unafraid. Donald Trump will not change what the mob could not.
When African Americans moved north in the great migration, they were met with a new assault: lynching and race riots in which their communities were burned and bombed, children killed, all done to crush the spirit of those who demanded the right to be free. But take note, black people survived, even as some black persons did not. And they are still here, unbowed, unbroken, unapologetic and unafraid. Donald Trump will not change what the mob could not.
Tens of thousands of Mexican American citizens were expelled from the country in the 1930s to open up jobs for white men during the Depression, in a wave of xenophobic bigotry much like the one we face now. But take note, Mexican Americans survived. And they are still here, unbowed, unbroken, unapologetic, and unafraid—after all, their ancestors were in all likelihood here on this land long before yours or mine. Donald Trump will not change what war and conquest could not.
When segregation was struck down, whites responded by closing schools to avoid integration, creating segregated academies, hurling bricks and rocks at black families who were seeking an equal education for their kids. But again, black people survived. Donald Trump cannot break what Bull Connor could not, what George Wallace could not, what the killers of Martin and Medgar Evers and Vernon Dahmer and Jimmie Lee Jackson could not.
When Barack Obama became the nation’s first black president, whitelash took the form of birtherism, led by the man who now will lead the nation. Even worse, his victory was met by outright assaults on the Voting Rights Act, and by state lawmakers hoping to make it harder for black and brown folks (and low-income persons of all races) to exercise their right to the franchise. With every step forward, people of color have been met with the rage of the white masses who have long believed America was ours, and that others resided here on a guest pass we could revoke on a whim. Hence the hostility to immigration and the thought that we might have to share space—not only physical space but the very notion of what it means to be American—with those who look different, pray differently, or speak a different language of origin.
But through all of this, people of color have survived. Even the indigenous of this continent, whom we tried so hard to eliminate, remain, and they are standing tall at Standing Rock and elsewhere to remind us that we are not God and they are not gone. And they intend to fight as they have always fought. For although the struggle against white supremacy and the whitelash that is its signature move might be new to