November 9, 2016

I woke up this morning to the full realization that my country hates me and everyone like me.

I always knew it deep down. I talk about it. I write about it. But I guess I was still holding on to some naive notion that when faced with an explicit show of that hatred, my country would back down and back off, if for no other reason than to show good manners. To pretend to be better than it is.

Growing up black, you know your country doesn’t love you. It never has. And you wonder if it ever will. At best, it tolerates you with veiled disdain. At worst, it hunts you down and kills you, but at least has the decency later to pretend that it “wasn’t about race or oppression.”

It’s the same when you grow up brown, Asian, native, an immigrant, disabled, queer, nonbinary…

You learn to not be loved by your country. You even learn to be hated by your country. But you still hope somehow, somewhere, that there is some line that just won’t be crossed.

Well, you were wrong. We were all wrong. Our country hates us and is content to wallow openly in that hate, shove it in our faces even.

We won’t despair, though. Oh, we’re going to mourn and wail and scream in anger. We’re going to cry deep tears of heartbreak. But then we’re going to do what we always do when faced with the seemingly insurmountable strength of the oppressor.

We’re going to fight.

Throughout this whole cycle, my awesome parents have been so inspiring to me, even more so than usual. These are people who grew up in the south during the civil rights era. They know what it means to have the country’s hate all over their backs. But when I began to despair for the future, they always said, “No, don’t worry. We’ll be okay. We trust our God, and we always have. But our job is to look out for others. Look out for those with even less privilege than ours. Don’t get lost in your own despair. Stand up and fight for everyone.”

So that’s what I’m going to do. I will let my anger and tears fuel the fire. I will fight against the hate of my country. Because despite what so many others may think, it is MY country, too. And I WILL make it truly great again.

Let’s do this.