Not Surprised: Black Trans Tired Ass Reflections on White Reactions to Trump
On November 20th I blew out a luminaria with the Maya Young’s name sharpied on the side. I was on my hands and knees facing a pond and hundreds of muted candles identical to the one in front of me, save for the names. I found the first name I recognized and called it out into the sky with the other trans folks and those who love us. Maya Young was another Black trans woman turned ancestor too young. On Transgender Day of Awareness we pause to remember the victims of transphobia, homophobia, and white supremacy. Our community is not one new to mourning, or to fighting for our right to live. With the election of Donald Trump, white folks are starting to get a glimpse at the horror that marginalized groups have faced for centuries.
I argue that the responses of white liberals, specifically of disbelief, surprise, and guilt, are both frustrating and illuminating. It is a true privilege to spend an entire life without realizing the realities of racism and other systems of oppression. For years I’ve been told my objections to my oppression were me being over sensitive. After two decades of being gaslit I find the guilt and tears of white folks too little too late. This is a meditation on the fear I’ve felt as a trans queer Black person navigating the world before, during, and after the election of Trump. This is me trying to balance my desire to have an open and loving heart. This is me accepting that my anxious beliefs, that my identities make me unlovable and unwanted, have been verified by this election.
Objectively speaking, 2016 was a shit year. There’s the continued occupation and desecration of Native Land, with militarized police openly attacking the unarmed Indigenous led efforts to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, a project that threatens the water supplies for millions of people. More unarmed Black folks were turned into hashtags, their deaths caught on film, and our outrage was met with continued injustice. A sanctuary for queer and trans folks was attacked and we lost sixty siblings, again, almost all folks of color. For months the rhetoric of a white supremacist, misogynistic, xenophobic loud mouth has been threatening to tear families apart and assault more women. Why did it take until his election for white guilt to kick into overdrive?
Many white Americans have been describing the election of Donald Trump, and the drastic increase in hate crimes, as a total surprise. Soothed by the lies of American progress, multiculturalism, and colorblindness, white liberals could feel at ease. Racism in all its systemic glory has continued regardless of the amount of melanin in the White House. As we can see with the extreme violence enacted against folks of color, especially trans and queer folks, that has happened all year long. Given this, it is inarguable that interpersonal racism, what folks usually think of when they think of “classic racism”, to the physical extreme of death is not uncommon. Why does white America not only see the election of Trump, but also the violence dealt out to non-normative bodies, as a new phenomenon? What makes suffering visible? What use is white guilt? Most of all, what are the psychic effects for folks of color having to often bear witness to white folks “waking up”?
In early October audio surfaced with Donald Trump openly discussing his delight in assaulting women. This was after several women had already stepped forward to bravely speak their truths and attest to being victims of Trump’s violent misogyny first hand. This was also after Trump had made famous damning and troubling remarks about deporting all Muslims, mocking disabled folks and calling Mexican immigrants rapists. The audio of Trump’s “locker room talk” was a tipping point for several folks, mostly white men from his party seeking to protect a precious asset to their whiteness as property, their white wives and daughters. In this election the allegiance lower class white men and white women showed to their whiteness and not their best interest was shocking for everyone, but not women and queers of color. I’ll focus on white women because I feel that I can speak more truth to that, having taken up residence in one for several months.
White feminist rhetoric from both parties threatened to destroy my tender intersectional heart. Images of the long line that stretched from Susan B. Anthony’s final resting place were shared widely. Folks waited eagerly to plant their “I Voted” sticker on Anthony’s grave after placing a historic vote for Hillary Clinton. I wonder how many knew of the racist history of the suffragettes, what some call “first wave feminism”, or of Anthony being quoted as saying she’d rather cut off her own arm that let “the Negro Man” vote before women.
Rejected from organizing in women’s rights organizations, women of color led the way in movements aimed at dismantling racism. Despite the common and white centric narrative of feminism that places the movement in waves, women of color were doing radical work and creating change on the ground for their communities since the beginning. Organizing, writing, and creating art, Black women fought for the interests of Black folks and women. Their position at the intersections of multiple matrices of oppression equipped them with the viewpoint necessary to create change that benefits all women, not just white ones.
Despite the jubilation of the left leaning pant suit nation, most white women voted for Donald Trump. The group so precious that their protection led to the defection of prominent Republican party leaders, voted in favor of their whiteness. On the other hand Black women, exempt from the suffragist history, showed up strong. Both educated and uneducated (as defined in capitalist degree centric kind of way) over 90% of Black women voted for Hillary Clinton. Once again, doing the work necessary that white women weren’t willing to do.
Progressive and white liberals have been exhibiting extra white guilt since the election. I know I’ve personally been approached by too many white folks asking for education, or worse, forgiveness. Waking up, coming to consciousness, and seeing the systems of oppression to which you benefit and perpetuate, is a violent process. For many it seems like the impossible happened. For others (the Others) this is a sad validation of what most of us have known or at least suspected about the nation state’s views on us.
In my whiteness studies class I’ve been surprised and admittedly angered at the ignorant bliss white folks get to have. Even as a child I questioned whether my actions were impacting the entire representation of my race. With the proliferation of whiteness as rightness on media and my ultra white environment, I was the only Black person people would see that day or that week. That was my life until I moved to Albuquerque. Every room I entire I scan and take stock of melanin.
Reports, images, and videos of the hate crimes and other violent actions against minorities have been widely shared. Suicide hotlines for queer and trans folks have been flooded with calls, and our limited access to healthcare growing scarcer. The little traumas of day to day life as a queer person, as a trans person, in a Black body, are not new. Watching white folks suddenly realize and partially begin to see this is heartbreaking. I've realized that all of the fear I’ve endured is as isolating as I’ve suspected. Figuring out that my humanity can not be made visible enough to prompt empathy or even register to others, that’s something I’m not sure I’ll ever reconcile.
Some of my best friends are white. How do I reconcile and seperate the violence of whiteness from white people? Taking a look at how the formation of whiteness as a category and the abusive process white children go through to learn how to be white is one way. But what use is empathy for white folks? Attempting to keep this heart open wide while realizing that the folks I’m trying to feel compassion for have only recently acknowledged my humanity is hard, and frankly not my job. I’m officially done with white tears. I honestly don’t know what it would take for me to trust white folks again, including family. Somehow I see hope within my queer and trans circles, and across groups of color. Those of us who have always known the terror of the state coming together, with white support or not.