Writing out some feelings like it’s 2020
There’s nothing I can write that I didn’t already write during the first Trump presidency.
Wild as this sounds, I think it was only a few days ago, in the days leading up to this week’s election, that I actually admitted to myself how much 2016-2020 really impacted and shaped me—as a writer, as an activist, as a student, as a woman of colour, as a Christian. Those were the years I was completing my undergraduate degree, studying political science and international development. Pretty much the whole time I was in university supposedly studying how to make the world a better place for the poor and vulnerable, Donald Trump was the U.S. President or campaigning to be.
And did I ever write articles and blog posts and essays and Tweets and poems and Instagram posts in those years, over and over and over again—when he introduced the “Muslim ban”, when he “both sided” Charlottesville, when he called countries in the Global South “sh*tholes”.
When he cleared a square of Black Lives Matter protests for a photo-op with the Bible.
When he coined the term “China virus” and hate crimes against Asians rose to unprecedented levels.
Those years shaped me—I think they shaped all of us—all the way into 2020 when a pandemic and a 21st century civil rights movement shook us to the core. And it feels so vulnerable to admit that I only really settled that with myself a week ago, as we entered the final few days before the U.S. election. Perhaps it was my subconscious bracing for what we didn’t yet know would come, though it was always a possibility.
Here's the thing—it feels overdramatic and even a bit embarrassing to admit how those years impacted and shaped me. In so many ways, I am shielded and removed from so much of this. First off, I’m Canadian. Not my country, not my election, not my President. Second, the immense privileges I have shield me from most of the consequences of really any election result, both in the U.S. and here in Canada.
And yet, I refuse to be embarrassed. I am proud that I feel the impact of these moments and that I keep writing about them. Because as a woman of colour deeply concerned with misogyny, racism and white supremacy, as a global citizen deeply concerned for our most vulnerable neighbours locally and globally, as a person of Christian faith who is deeply concerned with the name of Jesus being co-opted to advance white nationalism, I can’t not speak up.
So even though there is nothing I can write that I didn’t already write during the first Trump presidency, I suppose we will say all of it all over again—because apparently it still needs to be said.
Starting with this: Of all the disappointment and disillusionment I feel this week, what stings the most is watching a highly qualified woman of colour be passed over for the job in favour of a less qualified white man with an abysmal track record—and that’s not even to mention his ugly bigotry.
It stung deeply to watch on the world’s biggest stage a far too familiar story that happens in offices and universities and churches and other institutions across North America every day: No matter how kind and excellent and joyful and smart and whatever else you are required to be, there are not just some but many people who will refuse you a job that you are more than qualified for because you are a woman and because you are not white. Full stop.
And then they will, without batting an eye and without an ounce of shame, give that job to a white man who is far less kind, qualified, excellent or smart. Full stop.
I scrolled back in my text messages with my mom to the day Joe Biden stepped down from the campaign.
“Sad to say,” I wrote, “this late in the game, they need a young, charismatic white man. It’s too late to pull together an effective campaign for the first woman, first woman of colour.”
“Doesn’t it always come down to that,” she wrote back. “Always too something for us women of colour.”
But then—they did pull together a campaign for the first woman of colour to be President of the United States. And it’s hard to express how much it meant to me to watch Kamala Harris lead with joy, kindness, empathy and hope for the 100+ days of her campaign. It was—it is—a refreshing kind of leadership in today’s world. And that still matters—perhaps even more so, now.
And yet, women of colour like me and my mom knew it from day 1, even as we dared to hope. It wasn’t enough. It’s never enough, when you’re a woman living in a world of enduring patriarchy and toxic masculinity. It’s never enough, when you’re a person of colour living in a world of enduring racism and white supremacy. Because, as my mom wrote, it always comes down to that—and we know in our bodies and souls and lived experiences exactly what that is.
I hate that at around 9 p.m. on Tuesday night, I began to recognize with gut-wrenching clarity exactly what was happening—because we’ve seen it all before. Now, we’ve seen it on the biggest possible stage.
These are some hard words coming up, but I ask any white leader reading this to try and understand: I refuse to hear any more bragging from white leaders and executives about DEI progress when we have made none. Because I am here writing the same things I was writing in 2016. Tell me why, if not that all our “progress” has only been shallow lip service upholding the status quo.
There are, of course, many other things that sting. It stings that Gen Z did not vote as progressively as many like to think, as we try to uphold the myth that bigotry will die out with time. Spoiler, it won’t—not when young men in particular are voting like this. It stings that white nationalists continue to determine Christianity’s impact on society when the Way of Jesus is nothing like white nationalism. It stings that people who claim to be pro-life continue to vote against policies that are proven to save lives in the womb and beyond. It stings that the allure of the model minority myth continues to drive so many non-Black immigrant people of colour to vote for someone who has a clear track record of racism and xenophobia.
It stings bad this week. And there are real reasons to be weary and worried. Our bodies and souls remember what 2020 was like. (And if you don’t, know how privileged you are and listen up a little closer to this next paragraph…)
I’ll close with this: As we grapple with discouragement and disillusionment, we also know there is much fight ahead. And I know many of us know that and feel very weary about it. So I say this especially to people, like me, with certain amounts of privilege to leverage: Now is the time double down on our everyday efforts to care for the vulnerable and speak up against systems of injustice. If you haven’t before, now is the time to start. Elections are not the only things we have to win or lose. The small everyday battles remain—to improve housing or food security for one person or child living in poverty, to stop violence, war and abuse wherever they are, to demand climate action for the sake of those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, to amplify and reinforce a shaking voice that is speaking up for justice, whether in a courtroom, workplace, school, place of worship or otherwise.
Friends, when you can—and I believe, more often than not, we can do so much more than we think—know there are so many battles left to fight.
And when we fight, we win.