Despair and Depression Follows Trump Victory

The victory of Donald Trump was credited to his campaign hearing the pain of white working men. That demographic was not the only group to vote for Trump, but their supposed pain over their economic situation is not hard to believe or understand.

Since the election, however, there has been a serious lack of desire and willingness to understand the feelings of “the losers.” Yes, there has been and is great disappointment; that always happens when one loses, but bigger than that, there is a general feeling of despair, depression and hopelessness.

Trump’s rhetoric during the campaign was hate-filled. He railed against immigrants (his supporters will say it was only illegal immigrants, but many immigrants in general were offended by his words), he revealed his sexism, he berated and made fun of a man with a physical handicap, he called people names, and more. He was a bully, a proud, arrogant, privileged, white, male bully and his people loved it.

Others, though, did not like it. They did not attribute it to mere politics. To many, Trump’s verbiage revealed the soul, the spirit and the ugliness of America. He made it clear that he wanted to “make America great again.” He did not care that when he asked Stephen Bannon, for example, to head his campaign that the selection of a man who represented the so-called “alt-right” was threatening and troubling to people who feel that the alt-right is racist to its core.

When Trump won, the “other masses,” not white working class men, but women, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, immigrants …felt like they had been hit – not by Trump but by the American masses – with a steel ball. They felt like all of the work they had done to get marginalized people fairer representation in this country was for nothing. If they were reading and hearing Trump correctly, they understood that what he intended to do was take America “back” to a place when they were kept in their place as wealthy, white men grabbed again to the horns of power.

While “the other masses” have mourned, racial violence has spiked. White victors, including Richard Spencer, an avowed white supremacist, have gloated, saying that “white America,” “white men,” won.

Those words are like knives cutting into the souls of people who have been fighting white supremacy all their lives.

To this day, the prevalent feeling of many is not “sour grapes” because Trump won, but ta familiar feeling of hopelessness. Many people are clinically depressed. The victories gotten have been hard-fought and hard-won, and to think that those changes will possibly be wiped out by this man and his administration is daunting.

Some people have sunk into their despair. “Why even try anymore,” asked a young man at a candlelight vigil for environmental justice. Another person distressed about the suppression of voting rights by the Republicans before and during the campaign, said that the suppression will only continue under the new administration.

“All that fighting and suffering to get black people the right to vote …and now, this,” she said. “I…am tired.”

The Rev. William Barber has said, as have a slew of Progressive preachers and pastors, that “standing down” in light of this new president is not an option. Mourning at the thought of what seems like useless efforts is normal, but just giving up is not the answer.

Those who have been fighting must continue to fight …and must bring others along with them.

It is ironic that the new administration can identify with the pain of white working men, but has said basically nothing about all of the other groups who are not only hurting now but who have been hurting because of America’s racism, sexism and economic policies which benefit only a small few. It is troubling that his new cabinet seems to be made up of white men who have done well in this capitalistic country without much regard for the poor and struggling.

The message that many hear is that it only the struggling of the white working class that matters.

Time will tell what this president will to for the masses of suffering who are not white. Time will tell how immigrants will fare, how urban children will fare with a person heading up his education department who doesn’t seem to much care for public education. Time will tell how black and brown people will fare as they are continually affected by state-sanctioned violence, and how women will fare if the U.S. Supreme Court is stacked with justices who care little for the rights of women, even as they bleed for the rights of unborn babies.

So much is on the line; so many are standing on that line, and this administration seems not to notice or care.

Whenever a group or an individual feels unaffirmed, unimportant, disposable – they grow within them a deep pain that often turns to resentment and sometimes to violence. That is the pain Trump picked up in the white working men. What he and his administration do not see or care to think about is that that same pain is brewing in the souls of a lot of people who are not white but who, like their white brothers and sisters, are not working, either.

Pain is not black or white; it is not Republican or Democrat; it is not Right or Left; it is not Conservative or Liberal.

It is simply human pain, and pain, unattended, causes problems.

It would be nice if some of the Trump people would acknowledge that there is a lot more at stake than the bruised feelings of working white men, but I don’t suppose they ever will.

And it is because so many of them won’t acknowledge that that the predominant pain of those who did not want Trump (and many did not want Hillary, either) is pain, depression, hopelessness and despair.

Can a nation truly be great if so many are in despair? I think not.

A candid observation ….

God, Waiting

In spite of the vitriol of the president-elect, and the bubbling anger and rage that can be felt in our land, it is a fact that we as people are not wired to hate.

We are wired to care for others; we are wired for compassion; we are wired to be in community with each other.

Inside all of us is a place I call the “God-spot.” It is that place where we love each other, where we lose hatred and the desire for vengeance. It is that place that God put in all of us.

The problem is, we hide it and run from it. In our society, there is pressure to give into hatred and prejudice in the quest for power and popularity. We see it early, as in elementary schools, bullies taunt classmates and too many people remain bystanders, in agony over what they are seeing, but afraid to say anything, because they want to belong.

I said in a presentation that I gave recently that I was appalled not at Donald Trump; he has shown us who he is and that is just the reality.

What has bothered me is that so many people have gravitated toward him, even those who are embarrassed and bothered by what he has said. Politicians have lost all semblance of honesty and morals and self-respect because they want to “belong.”

As much as that bothers me, I still think that God has wired us all to care for each other. The “God-spot” can move people from hatred to agape love, from racism and sexism to a spirit of inclusion. The “God-spot” is a power within us that few acknowledge or perhaps even know is there, and it is a power that we stifle because it is frightening.

It is frightening because acknowledging and employing the “God-spot” sets us up to attacks from those who would rather sit in hatred, bigotry and worse. It sets us up to be called “weak,” and “loser,” and worse.

In a seminary where I spoke last week, a woman said that the election of Donald Trump might be good for the country. Perhaps. If he gets people jobs, that will be good for the country.

The issue is that he has moved people so far from the “God-spot,” including and especially Christian Evangelicals, who seemingly rejected the principles of God and chose instead to act on …other feelings.

I leave you, the reader, to define and examine and admit what those “feelings” are and were.

But in the midst of this turbulent time, a time when racists and sexists are coming out boldly to “make America great again,” something special is being ignored.

It is that “God-spot,” being replaced and pushed back by anger based on race, sex, class and economics.

America is in for some rough times, as people rely on their ideologies and leave the theology of a God who seeks justice behind.

But sooner or later, my hope is that those who acknowledge the “God-spot” within themselves, weeping as God’s people tear each other apart, will step forward and desire to “belong” to a beloved community, rather than a community so fractured that it threatens to implode before our very eyes.

God is waiting, I think.

A candid observation …

Defining Racism

I am at a loss.

In spite of the rhetoric of president-elect Donald Trump, which reeked of racism and sexism, Trump and his surrogates insist he is not a racist.

Neither, they say, is Stephen K. Bannon, who served as candidate Trump’s campaign chairman and who ran, Breitbart News, the platform for what is called the “alt-right.” The alt-right adheres to the belief that the United States is supposed to be a white man’s country.” Richard Spencer, leader of the alt-right movement, said as late as last Saturday that the alt-right is a “white identity movement.”

Spencer said that many people who voted for Trump will not admit that at its core, the support for the president-elect is mired in identity politics. In a recent article, Spencer said, “White identity is at the core of both the alt-right movement and the Trump movement, even if most voters for Mr. Trump “aren’t willing to articulate it as such.”(http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/alt-right-salutes-donald-trump.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0)

A cry of protest, “we want to take our country back” has been loud and persistent ever since Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 and again in 2012. Many heard that statement as dog-whistle language, putting out the message that people of color had gotten out of their place. The country was becoming “too brown,” and the ascendancy of Obama, a black man, to the White House, was the last straw. The Tea Party was formed, many believed, not merely as a backlash against the passage of the Affordable Care Act, but against the election of Obama, and as a protest against establishment politics which had allowed the situation to develop.

At the heart of the backlash that erupted after Obama’s election was racial identity politics. In private circles, white people would admit it; I know it because enough of my white friends have said the same. But in public, whites – in politics and out – have insisted they are not racist, despite supporting a political movement which is based, it seems, in the belief that America’s whites have been marginalized and disrespected.

So, what is racism, exactly? One woman in an interview on NPR last week said, “this word racism is used so much that it’s losing its effectiveness.” Other white people have outright laughed even as they have totally rejected the notion that they are racist.

It seems that people are confused. I have heard white people declare they are not racist because they do not use the “n” word and do not wear white sheets. They have black friends …and they voted for Barack Obama. That ought to be proof, they say.

They deny that there is such a thing as institutional racism, implemented and supported by the power structure – which in this case is based in white supremacy – in determination to maintain its power. They deny that people of color and of different religions have been used to bolster the economic and political power of the white ruling class.

They deny that voter suppression has been a part of American history from the beginning. Black people have been seen as being “a problem,” as W.E.B. DuBois once wrote, and every effort has been made down through the years to keep blacks from gaining too much of a political presence.

That’s not opinion. That’s historical fact.

Donald Trump’s followers have been openly racist, many of them, in their language and attitudes toward people of color. Indeed, Mr. Trump’s history reveals that he has been less than supportive of black people in this nation.

But he’s not racist. Right?

I need someone to tell me, explain to me, what the white definition of “racist” and “racism” is. If we are not seeing racism walking this land now, then what is it we are seeing? When Donald Trump stood up and warned his followers, for example, to “watch the voting in “certain areas” because, he said, “we all know” that voter fraud goes on in these areas, what was he saying? I think we all know …but nobody wants to say it. If implying that in areas where a large number of minorities vote is automatically prone to have voter fraud is not racist, then what is it?

People get immediately defensive if called racist, and yet, the speech and actions of so many people say that they believe in the concept of white superiority. Their speech and actions say that they want their country “back,” back to a day and time where white supremacy ruled unfettered, not having to worry about so many people of color in this, the country that many believe was and is supposed to be for white people.

There is a need for reconciliation between the races in this country – most specifically between white people and native Americans and white people and people of African descent. But reconciliation and therefore the “healing” that everyone is talking about is and will be impossible unless and until we come to a consensus of what racism is. White people deny not only that they are racist but that racism as an entity even exists anymore.

That is a problem …and it also is not true.

Ask Richard Spencer and participants in the alt-right movement, and then go to a respectable gathering of establishment white people and ask the same question. Over a glass of wine, the educated and uneducated alike will admit what few will admit publicly – that of course, most of what is going on is evidence of the racism which still runs rampant in this country.

A candid observation…

Black People and Women, Supporting Trump

donald-trump-comments-about-women-excuses

It makes no sense to me at all.

Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for president of the United States, has shown himself to be racist and sexist, not to mention xenophobic. Though he visited a black church and participated in worship, he has not shown any real compassion for black lives. He has said he will bring jobs to the inner city, but he has not said how he will do that. He has said that black people have little to lose by supporting him, saying “your schools are lousy,” lifting up the high unemployment rate among black people, and saying that black people cannot walk in their neighborhoods without getting shot. He has said little to nothing about excessive police violence meted out against unarmed black people, resulting in their deaths with police officers not being held accountable. He has not come across as a friend to black people in the United States.

Likewise, he has shown an incredible lack of respect for women since he began his campaign. He bristled and rebelled when Megyn Kelly of Fox News called him on his name calling of women in the first GOP primary debate, and has consistently said that he deeply respects women. But his language and, apparently, his actions in the past and the not so past, have indicated differently. This is a man who has objectified and disrespected both black people and women, and yet, people in both those demographics support him, some vehemently so.

Trump’s racism and sexism seem not to matter, including his sexual advances and indiscretions toward women. His bullying of anyone who has challenged him…seems not to matter. His name-calling seems not to matter. His mocking of people with disabilities seems not to matter. For his core, nothing matters, and it rocks me to my core.

It is inconceivable to me how any woman, and any black person, can support and believe in this man. His words and his actions have opened a door for people to go backwards. His definition of making America “great again” seems to be going back to America’s sexist and racist roots. He comes off as a privileged, selfish white man who never grew up, a bully by whom many people have always wanted to be called “friend.” Black people in this country have always wanted to be a part of the “in crowd” of white people, a group of people many of whom will never accept blacks as being equal to whites. And I can recall women in college who gravitated to the “jocks” because they were popular, because they had money and because they, too, wanted to be a part of the “in crowd.”

Trump has gotten away with his behavior for years, with people giggling and acting like he is OK. He hasn’t changed, as his surrogates have asserted. He is 70 years old. He has not changed and will not. He has been disrespectful toward blacks and women and many other white males his whole life.

In true form, he, an undeniable bully, cannot take what he gives out. He is the ultimate whiner; everybody is doing him wrong; the name-calling and cruelty he began he and his surrogates blame on everybody else.

He is a classic narcissist and bully, and yet, people support him for the office of president of the United States.

I am not so concerned with Donald Trump. He is who he is and has always been and will always be. Those saying that he has changed, that he has “confessed the Lord Jesus” and has truly changed, have their heads in the sand. Trump would turn against Jesus if he heard Jesus call him on his shortcomings. He’s that arrogant.

What I am concerned with is the mass of Americans, blacks and women particularly, who follow him, who adore him, who desire to get close to him and be a part of his inner circle. I find myself wondering what they do, the women, if and when males accost or insult their daughters. Are they silent? Do they encourage their daughters to just shut up and take it? And I wonder what blacks who support him tell their children and their congregations about how to deal with racism. Do they tell them that it’s not so bad, that “by and by,” when they get to heaven, it’ll all be all right?

Such denial of this man’s decadence is unacceptable. He is grooming a whole new generation of racists and sexists and bullies. America is going backwards to a degree that is scary and troubling. Trump’s damage is deep and will not go away if he doesn’t win the White House. There has been unleashed the arrogance of America’s past, when white men and women felt no compunction at all about racist and sexist behavior; some of his supporters reportedly have said they want to repeal the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote because they are incensed that women may swing the vote away from their beloved candidate.

Does that bother anyone but me? Is America in real trouble? Has the self-hatred carried by blacks and women come to a dangerous day of reckoning? Has the work toward getting rid of these two “isms,” written into the Constitution, been for nothing?

The more things change, the more they remain the same. This country has been forever changed because of Donald Trump, and two demographics which should have run from him as fast as possible. They did not. They gravitated toward him, and in so doing, unleashed a demon I am afraid will be very difficult to quash.

This country isn’t so democratic. It isn’t so moral. It isn’t so ideal. It’s much like many countries which this country has denounced because of their human rights violations.

Land of the free and home of the brave? Not so much.

A candid observation …

Don’t Let White Backlash Win

After the Civil War, when Americans of African descent had been freed from slavery through the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks enjoyed a season of being treated as genuine American citizens, with greater rights than they had had before. Some blacks had fought for their freedom in the War Between the States and had earned, they felt, the right to demand and to experience full American citizenship. During Reconstruction, nearly 2000 black people were elected to public office on local, state and federal levels. They organized and became activists and advocates for the rights and black people. From 1867-1877, a period known as Radical Reconstruction, the Congress actually granted black people the right to vote. (http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/black-leaders-during-reconstruction)

But Southern whites resented the gains made by black people; they yearned for the return of the reign of white supremacy, and they began undoing every gain made by blacks during Reconstruction. Using violence and their political power, Jim Crow was put into place, designed to put black people “back in their place.” Beginning in 1869, Southern states, beginning with Tennessee, began putting into place all-white “redeemer” governments, sympathetic to the cause of the Confederacy. (http://www.understandingrace.org/history/gov/civilwar_recon_jimcrow.html)

The efforts of the Southern states were successful. Blacks lost their right to vote. Public facilities were segregated. They became victims of racist voter suppression tactics; they were denied equal education, access to tools which would help them achieve economic parity with white people, and in effect were relegated again to second-class citizenship.

It is happening again. White backlash began with a fury, it seems, after Barack Obama was elected president of the United States – not once, but twice. Many but not all white people have been furious since he first got into office; some met the day of Obama’s first inauguration to strategize how to make him a “one term president.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/robert-draper-anti-obama-campaign_n_1452899.html) The emergence of the Tea Party was part and parcel of the disgust many Americans felt that Obama was the most powerful man in the world, and adherents gained hundreds of thousands of like-minded thinkers. That his Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed only added fuel to the already blazing fire of resentment.

And now, the “angry white base” who support Donald Trump and his promise to “make America great again” are on the final stretch of the race to the White House. It doesn’t matter to them what Trump says or does, how moral or immoral some of his business dealings have reportedly been, whether or not he reads the Bible or goes to church -or lies about whether or not he reads the Bible and goes to church. It doesn’t matter if he used undocumented girls to work as models for him, or that, for all of his talk about how other countries are robbing America, he uses labor in other countries to make his products. They do not care. They just want a white man (not a woman!) in the White House.

Studying Reconstruction and the virulence of the white backlash of that period is sobering and scary; what is even more scary is that we as a nation do not seem to want to remember that it was after Reconstruction that black people received some of their most heinous treatment, most of which was sanctioned by government. White supremacy does not want company; it resents that some of its space and place in American politics was trespassed and has been violated by a black man for the past 8 years, but it is bound and determined to “get its place” again. That’s what “make America great again” means, in essence. White supremacists want things to be like they were before, when black people (and brown people) answered to them, when women knew their place, where men married women and that was it, and where America’s immigration policy protected the majority status of white people. White supremacists are not pleased, in fact, they are probably mortified, that predictions indicate that by 2043, America will no longer be majority white. It is a thought they cannot bear.

So, frightened, poor and unemployed/underemployed white Americans, grateful that Donald Trump has heard their cries, will flock to the polls on Election Day, but don’t be deceived. Many affluent white people, equally as disgusted and frightened about the diminishing numbers of white people in America, will vote for Trump, too. They want their power back. They support the building of The Wall. They support keeping immigrants out of America (unless they come from Europe), they support whatever they need to support in order to “make America white again.”

I hope we don’t let them. I hope scores of people, black, brown and white, have a love for the progress that has been made in this country in spite of our inherent and nascent racism and sexism. I hope as many Americans who cherish the progress that has been made for so many people, non-white, non-male, and non-heterosexual – go to the polls and vote. I hope we, “the American people,” don’t let white backlash win again. We have come too far.

Going backwards is just not an option.

A candid observation …