We Survive No Matter the Results of the Election 2020

Maya Angelou said, ‘You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.”

I spent election night 2016 talking about my anger with my two youngest daughters who were both in high school at the time. They had gone to bed with the intention of crying themselves to sleep after learning that Donald Trump was elected. They came of age with Barack Obama’s encouragement and hope, Michelle Obama’s power and grace, and two young Black girls who looked like them in the White House. This was the first but unfortunately not the last time they felt the bitter sting of injustice. I reminded them they have a legacy to uphold; have the strength of their ancestors in their bloodstreams; will survive this because they must; refuse to be mired and paralyzed by fear.

The Wednesday following the election, two white women colleagues and I taught a predominately white class of about 80 teacher candidates. We talked about the election with our students. A Latinx student shared that she was from a mixed-status family, which meant that she was documented but her parents were not. She also was placed in a middle school with many immigrant students who were either undocumented or mixed-status. She told us that she and others were organizing a silent protest on campus. After class, we joined the silent protest where we were greeted by Trump-supporting students in MAGA hats who were waging a counter-protest. One of them wore a tee-shirt with an image of a brick wall covered in the American Flag that read “Build that Fucking Wall!” He approached the student who had just told us her fears in class. He began yelling in her face, “Go Back to Mexico” and chanting “Billed that Wall! Billed that Wall!”

My colleagues and I formed a human shield to buffer our students from the MAGA counter-protestors. The wall tee-shirt wearing student soon turned his ire toward me because I wore a headscarf. MAGA students began to surround me. My colleagues and a group of young Black and Latinx students protected me by standing between me and the MAGA students. One young Black male student carried a sign that read “Fuck Trump!” An argument between him and the tee-shirt wearing student ensued. I pulled him to the side to talk to him. He said, “I moved from the South to California so that I wouldn’t have to deal with this racist shit.” I asked him, “What about the people you left behind?” He raised his eyebrows and asked me, “What do you mean?” I answered,

We cannot allow one racist white man to take us out of the game, even if he was elected president. You know damn well that if the police show up and see you arguing with that white boy they are going to protect him over you. That tee shirt he is wearing is now federal policy. We have every right to be angry. We must channel our anger. We must build coalitions with people across this country and this world. Together we survive.

Our mission is to continue to survive no matter the results of the election 2020. We channel anger, outrage, and grief. We can. We must.