A few nights ago, my 19-year-old daughter asked me if I was scared about the incoming Trump administration. I told her that while I am fearful, I am doing my best to not be consumed by fear. While we survived the first Trump, I suspect this second term is going to be far more turbulent.
Our conversation made me think a bit, and I suspect that many of us are harboring fears whether we acknowledge them or not. Here in my area—Portland. Maine—there are subtle or maybe not-so-subtle signs that as we get closer to Trump taking office, people are pulling back. In the past few weeks, more and more local businesses that typically stay open year-round are reducing their hours or, in extreme cases, closing for the winter. When I do go out, I see fewer and fewer people out. Admittedly, as a COVID-cautious person, going into sparsely populated spaces fills me with joy, but me and seven people in a restaurant doesn’t pay their bills.
I think it’s safe to say that we are all concerned about the economic impact of another Trump term, especially considering his campaign promises of tariffs. So, folks are either cutting back and trying to stash away a few dollars for the future or they are cutting back because they need to make ends meet right now. Either way, there is a ripple effect. Businesses that require customers are cutting back hours or closing and more people are struggling to make ends meet, as employees who expect to be working find themselves short on hours.
For the last several days, my neck and shoulder muscles have been in knots to the point of pain extreme enough for me to need to look to over-the-counter pain relief. As a rule, I am not a fan of painkillers of any sort; generally, I look to alternative solutions. However, my massage therapist can’t see me until the end of the month and last night the strain of my muscles was so painful that I was on the verge of tears. I ended up having to talk to myself and ask “What is going on?”
Fear
I realized that unlike the last Trump term, there are real uncertainties and fear coinciding with what was already going to be a decade of change and catch-up. In choosing to manage a small grassroots non-profit, I have long known that my only hopes for a real retirement would be from saving and investing my earnings from my consulting and training practice in my 50s, once my last child was launched into the world. Given that I have been doing anti-racism work long before Trump ever dreamed of running for office, never in my life planning did I ever imagine that a president and his political party could literally kill my career. But hey, life is what happens when you are busy making plans.
The rollback of what we now perceive as DEI work has real consequences, hearing Trump talk about doing away with the “radical Left” is damn scary. Never mind that I am a Black woman in America and, well, it’s no longer mental hyperbole to ponder if we will eventually be rolled back into racially segregated spaces, with Black people once again becoming second-class citizens. Will the gains my generation made as the first generation to not grow up in a racially segregated country be reversed in my lifetime? It is possible. I didn’t grow up under Jim Crow like my parents, but I may well die under it.
Never say never. We have already seen what happened to Roe v Wade.
Of course, I am not alone in my fears. Everyone I know who is queer and part of the LGBTQ+ community is scared, especially our trans family and friends. One of my healthcare providers who works heavily with the trans community told me she is scared for her patients. Personal friends who need gender-affirming medical care are scared about how they will maintain access to the healthcare they need to live life as they need to for their own well-being.
Our immigrant family and friends fear what might happen to them and their families. Rightly so.
I am also scared that allies will continue dropping off and hiding as much as possible within the safety and security of their whiteness. It’s already happening on so many levels. Will those with the cloak of whiteness really put themselves in harm’s way for marginalized people? Will you hide people, will you keep folks safe, will you support our work even if it means making personal sacrifices? Recent history isn’t too hopeful. People are planning to march when, honestly, our strategies for collective survival require more than boycotting platforms and publicly demonstrating while trying not to “disrupt” or “inconvenience” anyone.
If I can be blunt, that performative shit didn’t work well in 2016. If it had, we would not be here. The painful truth is that white people had one job after Trump won the first time: To ensure we didn’t get here again. A lot of white people did a lot of good work but what didn’t happen as much as was necessary was working with other white people. The ones who aren’t ever going to listen to me. The ones that many of you just stopped talking to after 2016. Guess who did talk to them?
Anyway, those are my fears: that I will become penniless, and destitute and rounded up to some work camp for uppity Negroes and I will die in whatever version of modern-day slavery these people attempt to bring back into vogue—and that people won’t fight back because of their fears. Maybe a little irrational; maybe not? It’s a great unknown at this point.
Our collective and individual fears permeate the air around us, but as Americans, we live in a place of denial where we stuff down reality and put on our game faces. We pretend that things are normal instead of facing our fears. One thing that life has taught me is that moving beyond our fears requires naming them. When I did, I started to laugh and remind myself that in this moment at least I am safe, my needs are met, and no one is at the door to take me away. Naming my fears and laughing didn’t make the pain in my neck and shoulders magically disappear but I was able to relax enough to fall back asleep.
It’s okay to be scared and to be fearful of what lies ahead for our country. What is happening in the United States is unprecedented and all the guardrails have failed. Perhaps they failed because we couldn’t face reality. We kept trusting “checks and balances” and the system and we kept expecting someone else to save us. At this point, as the tech bro oligarchs who bought themselves a doofus of a president become more enmeshed in our government, it is scary shit. But I still have hope. In the midst of my fear, I believe we can push back. We don’t have to roll over. We may not have Elon Musk money, but we have millions of unhappy Americans who, if we talk to one another and build trust, can strategize and survive. But it will require acknowledging our fear and not allowing ourselves to become immobilized. Fear itself isn’t the problem. It’s what we do with our fear. Do we lay down and accept injustice or do we allow our fear to become the fuel that leads us to justice? Can we turn our fear into the vehicle for lasting change? I sure as hell hope so.
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Image by Sid Balachandran via Unsplash