Friday, November 11, 2016

"All This and More, in Just 36 hours, at the Time of Writing, in Trumpland": Our Moral Obligation to Document Outpouring of Hate Speech and Hateful Acts in Trump's New America


And then there's this for you to consider: testimony, I call it. It's documentation of what's happening right before our eyes, in just two days, brought to us by white Christians in the U.S. What do we intend to do about it, the more than half of the nation who did not choose this? Will we stand by in silence? Will we be duped by the calls for "healing" issued by influential media gurus representing the very churches (white evangelical, Catholic, Mormon) who are inflicting these grave wounds on our social order? Can we do anything to change any of this, now that fewer than half of us chose, under the guidance of white Christian leaders, to place the nation entirely in the hands of the political party Mr. Trump represents? 


I choose to think we must at least document what's going on — as long as we are permitted to do this, that is. Here's a very limited selection of documentation — and see the two sites linked in the first link below, which are provoding ongoing documention of these incidents, the "It Has Begun 2016" site and Shaun King's site:

"This can't become our new normal: Hate acts reported across the country in wake of Trump's victory":

November 9, Day 1 of Trumpland, people of color started turning to social media to report physical assaults, verbal abuse, and hate crimes being perpetrated against them. (See a growing list of depressing tweets being collected here. More stories are being collected on a dedicated Tumblr called "It Has Begun 2016.") On Twitter, New York Daily News columnist Shaun King has been serving as a hub for self-reported racist attacks, most of which are subsequently confirmed via local news outlets and police reports; they are not, despite the conspiracy theories inevitably advanced by Trumpers, hoaxes and false flag operations concocted by Hillary supporters in an attempt to cast Trump in a bad light. Only the willfully blind can fail to see that President-elect Trump has made racism culturally permissible, given that attackers often explicitly connect their hateful acts to his leadership. For example, here is a G-rated one: "Aren't you [black and brown people] supposed to be sitting in the back of the bus now? Like Trump is president!" The reports go on and on and on. 
Around the country, spray-painted swastikas are appearing, including one proclaiming HEIL TRUMP. A non-white author of my acquaintance just discovered that her college visit was cancelled because someone draped a noose around the neck of a black doll and left it in an elevator. Ellen Oh of We Need Diverse Books tweeted that well dressed white boys were walking past people of color at the mall and hissing "Trump" at them. Racist messages are appearing in schools, such as this one scrawled on a black student’s locker in a high school in Minnesota. It says: "F**k N*****s." Offended by the language? Be offended that a teenager thought this was okay to write this. 
There are dozens upon dozens of similar reports of foul invectives being hurled at children of color around the country, as well as unconfirmed reports that eight trans kids responded to the news of Trump’s election by committing suicide. 
All this and more, in just 36 hours, at the time of writing, in Trumpland. 


In the days following the election, students are already invoking the name of our president-elect while they spread white supremacist messages.


In a single day, Raw Story has reported on three cases of pro-Trump related bullying of students. The first occurred when students in Minnesota were greeted with "F*ck n*ggers" written on their door. A Michigan middle school had a small group of children chanting "build that wall," while their fellow students, who are Latino, were crying. Another school, this one in Pennsylvania, had students marching with Donald Trump signs while chanting "white power." We also covered a story of Trump supporters, who filmed themselves driving through Wellesley College, Hillary Clinton’s alma mater and harassing black students. 
Wednesday, we covered a south Philly neighborhood subjected to Nazi graffiti. A Utah man told a neighbor boy, "get out of here n*gger" — then attacked the boy's dad with stun cane.


This generally has been called the "hate election" because everyone professed to hate both candidates. It turned out to be the hate election because, and let’s not mince words, of the hatefulness of the electorate. In the years to come, we will brace for the violence, the anger, the racism, the misogyny, the xenophobia, the nativism, the white sense of grievance that will undoubtedly be unleashed now that we have destroyed the values that have bound us. 
We all knew these hatreds lurked under the thinnest veneer of civility. That civility finally is gone. In its absence, we may realize just how imperative that politesse was. It is the way we managed to coexist.


On social media, many people described threats and insults against minorities they said were made by apparent Trump supporters. 
Spray-painted messages such as "Black Lives Don't Matter and Neither Does Your Votes" on a wall in North Carolina and a swastika and "Make America White Again" on a baseball dugout in New York went viral. 
Civil rights leaders told a news conference in Washington on Thursday they were hearing of an increase in bullying incidents against children from racial and religious minority groups. 
Mark Potok, senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center civil rights group, said he had not seen such a rash of hate crimes in the United States since Barack Obama was elected America's first black president in 2008. 
A similar wave occurred when Britain voted in June to leave the European Union, Potok said.

On social media, people have highlighted episodes of hate speech or hate crimes that have cropped up in the hours since the election, describing what it’s like on "Day 1 in Trump’s America." 
Here’s what’s happening . . . .

After Donald Trump won the title of President of the United States — without winning the popular vote — on Tuesday night, open displays of xenophobia and racism in his name seem to be ramping up across the nation, even in schools. These troubling displays of intolerance are being met with fear, anger, and sadness from those of us who hope for our civic spaces to remain safe for everyone. In spite of this fear, though, many people are choosing to share and signal boost evidence of these experiences on social media. Although it is difficult to say there are any silver linings to these incidents, it is comforting that, sometimes, we can show our solidarity with something as simple as a re-share.


Joseph Serna reports,

A Muslim college student in San Diego was robbed, and Latino high school students in Northern California were given mock "deportation letters" by a classmate in incidents that authorities believe were tied to the election.Two men confronted a female student in a parking lot stairwell at San Diego State on Wednesday, "made comments about President-elect Trump and the Muslim community," and then stole her keys and her car, university police said in a statement. . . . 
The university president said the woman was wearing a hijab. She was robbed of her purse and backpack, police said. 
In Redding, meanwhile, a student at Shasta High School handed out "deportation letters" to Latino classmates, and a video of the incident was posted on Twitter, said Shasta Union High School District Supt. Jim Cloney, who said he believed the episode was related to Trump's election.

Two Trump fans from Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. drove through Wellesley College this week while waving a Trump flag and harassing black students. 
Wellesley student Sydney Robinson posted a message on Facebook detailing the incident, along with photos and videos showing the Trump supporters in action. 
"Edward Tomasso and Parker Rander-Riccardi, two students at Babson College, decided to drive around our beautiful campus with a Trump flag in a pick up truck," she writes. "They laughed, screamed and sped around campus. Then, they parked in front of the house for students of African decent, and jeered at them, screaming Trump and Make America Great Again. When one student asked them to leave, they spit in her direction."

Latino leaders say Trump's election has many families with mixed immigration status preparing to go underground to prevent deportation. Educators even reported Wednesday "children in tears because they think their families are going to pack up and move," said Richard Jaramillo, president of the Utah Coalition of La Raza. 
Leaders said many Utah residents also were preparing "family plans" to arrange care for U.S. citizen children if a parent is deported (including having their insurance and school information handy) and were bracing for possible mistreatment from people emboldened by Trump's past anti-immigrant statements.

Explicit expressions of bigotry and hatred by Trump supporters were common throughout the campaign, and they have become even more intense since his election. On a department-store window in Philadelphia, vandals spray-painted "Sieg Heil 2016" and Mr. Trump's name written with a swastika. In a Minnesota high-school bathroom, vandals scrawled the Trump campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again," and next to it, "Go back to Africa." There are many more reports pouring in of verbal and physical harassment of Muslims, Latinos and other members of minorities. 


I'm not going to get harassed at a gas station. My kids aren't going to be tormented on the playground. Nobody's going to spray-paint a swastika on my garage or tell me to hustle my ass to the ovens. Nobody's going to ship my abuela back to El Salvador. I can't begin to plumb the depth of the fear that the targets of this unmoored ferocity must be feeling.


He turned the primary season into an extreme sport. Shouting at enemies enlivened him as it enlivened the ranks of his followers, looking for plausible targets to hate. So did the compiling of enemies lists. What Trump said did not have to be true to win applause; his anger was true. Crowds lapped up his viciousness. 




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