A quick note based on my post-Brexit experience in the UK – in the time period after the election, your biggest threat will not be Trump and his government. It will be your newly validated bigot neighbours. After Brexit, hate crime shot up by 60% in the UK nearly overnight and it still hasn’t returned to its pre-Brexit level. I imagine the same will happen in America. Be careful. No matter who they are, Trump voters are not your friends. Be safe. Your biggest enemy right now is the neighbour you went to church with and the people you pass on the street every day. Lock down. Go to ground if you have to. Look out for one another. Please, be careful.
THIS is what you can do tight now if you are white and desperate in America right now:
– Cook your Latino, Black, Native, LGBT, Muslim and Asian neighbours a casserole tonight. I can assure you, they are much more afraid than you today and maybe they should not get out of the house.
– Offer to take them or their kids wherever they need to go when they have appointments and maybe school.
– Go over and say hi, say: I know you are scared. How can I help you?
– If you see a woman wearing a hijab on the subway, sit next to her and smile.
– If you see a man wearing a turban, a kippah do the same.
– Watch out for your kids non-white class mates.
– If you see someone hollering racist shit at another person in the streets and it feels relatively safe. CALL THEM OUT ON IT.
It is not that more people suddenly are racist. But many people suddenly feel validated and allowed to abuse others. Those people? Are cowards! As soon as someone stands up to them, they shrink back into their little holes!
RACISM IS A PLANT THAT GROWS IN FERTILE DIRT.
iF YOU NIP IT IN THE BUD OFTEN TIMES IT WILL WITHER AWAY.
Wehret den Anfängen!
I was actually coming home to make a post about this very thing this morning. Possibly the worst thing about Trump’s election is that it has legitimized and normalized the bigotry and hatred he built his campaign around. People who supported him did so because they supported those ideas and now, with his election, those ideas have been validated.
While that’s absolutely going to lead to a lot of overt violence, you’d better believe that it’s going to lead to even more lowkey bigotry. People are going to be testing these waters, seeing how much bigotry they can get away with out in the open. That’s why, in addition to the things above, it’s more important than ever to push back against that kind of lowkey hate when you hear it.
In your home, in your school, in your workplace, in your “friendly” spaces, people are trying to find out “who’s with me”, they’re trying to figure out “us” and “them” and that’s how they’re going to do it. By saying things and seeing who agrees, who pushes back, who stays silent. I know it’s so hard to stand up to people you like, people who you want to like you, people you have to spend time with pretty much every day whether you like each other or not. I know it is, but I can’t stress enough how important it is right now to not let bigotry go unchallenged. Be smart about it and keep yourself safe, but please please please stand up if there’s any way you can.
A thing which has apparently been happening in Britain (which I can’t vouch for as I’m not there anymore) that is potentially useful is that people who support people who are immigrants/muslims/people other than cis-white-het are wearing a safety pin on their clothing / bag / backpacks to indicate that they are a person who can be trusted and gone to in the event of problems.