Today I testify to feeling shocked. I testify to witnessing an American president positioned shoulder to shoulder with tech billionaires while a former first lady sits it out. I testify to the clashing of events- the honoring of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the rallying of MAGA voters who don’t own what they voted for, even as the hate history is spelled out on their hats. Because the political and economic structures in America allow them not to own it, count on them not owning it, count on mistrust of the dictionary, so we don’t look up words like oligarchy and start putting two and two together and start talking to each other like human beings who suffer under the same policies yet vote so very differently. I testify to my own silence, to the words I don’t say in paragraph one, because the people I hope will hear them, will stop reading.
I am shocked that life goes on. That people eat breakfast and tell jokes and log onto Facebook. And yet, I log on and I eat and I escape into reality television, and I try to forgive individuals for our individual and collective failure to be decent humans.
There are so many promises awaiting the “enemy within”. But if I had to rank my many fears the fear of collective, willful amnesia is at the top. Carrie Underwood will sing “America the Beautiful”, and I sense we should be careful to support her right to do so, and some may even say applaud her for encouraging unity. Rebecca Ferguson, when invited to perform at Trump’s 2017 inauguration, offered to sing “Strange Fruit” – a song about racism in America, and I say it’s a shame they didn’t take her up on it. I say unity around reality benefits all, as uncomfortable as it may be. And unity around willful ignorance about this administration’s agenda is participating in the deterioration of our rights and freedoms, and I don’t think Carrie Underwood is performing a public service. This re-elected president did not tone down his rhetoric or offer policies that would benefit most Americans. But here he is, because here we are. So I don’t begrudge you your breakfast or your escapes, but I hope we can all pick our heads up long enough and regularly enough to clean up our mess.
Elections still matter. Politicians are not all the same. America is not post-racist or post-sexist or post anything.
Over the past year I’ve been reading June Jordan’s Technical Difficulties: African American Notes on the State of the Union. I picked up this book sometime before Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee for president and finished it just before January 20, 2025. First published in 1992, these essays call America to a reckoning of herself, and left me feeling that not much of anything has changed. I’ve been thinking a lot about identity politics. Of all the post-election analysis, laying the blame at this door is a very American thing to do. In The End of Democratic Delusions: The Trump Reaction and What Comes Next, George Packer (The Atlantic, January 2025), echoes this sentiment. The assumption that changing demographics in America would not guarantee a more liberal political destiny, and “the presumption of like-mindedness among immensely diverse groups of voters should be retired, along with the term people of color, which has lost any usefulness for political analysis.” I wonder how it would feel for this man to wake up in the skin of a woman, and to know that issues that affect your health, your safety, your ability to support your family are dependent upon the degree to which white male voters care about them. How odd it is to hear men decry identity politics, when Donald Trump’s successful re-election was aimed at stoking the anger of white men. And how convenient it is to make misleading proclamations like, “Nearly half of Latinos and a quarter of black men voted for Trump”, as if this neutralizes the damage of Trump’s policies, and allows us to turn our heads from the existence of white supremacy in the Republican agenda. The results tell the same story. A loyal base of mostly white, mostly male and evangelicals said Trump is our man. And to talk about the role of identity politics without talking about how years of gerrymandering, state voter suppression laws and misinformation handed this election to Trump is a low blow. My identity is not your liability.
June Jordan also decried identity politics in her essay, Waiting for a Taxi. She laments that identity politics forces us into monolithic categories where we are forced to choose which parts of ourselves to own and to acknowledge in others. But she didn’t advocate for the abolishment of identity politics but rather its evolution. Identity politics is born from the reality of living in America as a non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual person. “For those of us born into a historically scorned and jeopardized status, our bodily survival testifies to the defensively positive meanings of race and class identity because we have created these positive implications as a source of self-defense.” She went on to explain, “There is another realm of possibility, political unity and human community based upon concepts that underlie or supersede relatively immutable factors of race, class, and gender: the concept of justice, the concept of equality, the concept of tenderness.”
These are not the concepts of Donald Trump or of MAGA votes. Playing nice with the winning party is not what’s called for. We will not advance justice, equality or tenderness with our heads in the sand, popping up only to consume cynical, slanderous propaganda. We do not have the right to complain about our electoral system or informational system if we do not consistently participate in changing what’s wrong. We do not get to erase identity politics from public consciousness, even as the supreme court strikes blows to diversity, equity and inclusion.
These are the times we are living in. What identity will we choose? Will we pretend identity doesn’t matter, that every person no matter their skin color, their gender, their sexual orientation, their nationality is free and safe? Will we choose to enter a state of amnesia where we forget the way this election was won and how it appealed to the worst of who we are? Will we choose to not recognize that we believe the worst of what’s said about a woman and excuse the worst of who a man tells us he is? Will we choose to pretend that America is not clinging to racism, and claim we can’t comprehend how racism is costing lives including our own? Will we shut ourselves in our houses, building worlds out of gaming and podcasts, and refuse to open up a news article that might be delivering accurate information? Will we shut down conversation and de-legitimize experts because what they are saying is too uncomfortable or too depressing or too personal for us?
Today I testify to feeling shocked, angry, stunned into a silence that will be followed by my insistence on bearing witness to what we the American people are tolerating, excusing, doing and not doing. Today I testify to not knowing what it means to be human in America. Today I dissent.
