‘This is our country, too’
Be strong. Be good. Be kind.
Those were my parting words to my two young daughters as I left for work this morning. I kissed them lightly on the foreheads, but really I wanted to grasp them in a tight embrace and never let go, to protect them against an onslaught of ugliness that I see ahead.
I hope I am wrong. I hope that this nation can still somehow live up to its better angels. I hope that the hateful rhetoric of the campaign trail does not translate into hateful policies and actions.
But I am a Latina immigrant. My husband and daughters are black. He and I are both journalists.
And Donald Trump is president-elect of the United States.
Let that sink in.
I am a Latina immigrant. My husband and daughters are black. He and I are both journalists.
And Donald Trump, the man who wrangled his way to the presidency by calling Mexicans rapists, by denigrating the contributions of immigrants and refugees, by vowing to bring back the discriminatory practice of stop-and-frisk, by referring to women in the basest of terms and bragging about groping them without consent, is president-elect of the United States.
What’s more, millions of my fellow citizens voted to put him there. They reveled in his words and cheered him on with chants that made it clear that their “real America” did not include people like us, that our very identities mark us as the other, the unwanted, that my chosen profession makes me a “corrupt” and “terrible” person.