on rage, compassion and boundaries

It’s been over a week since President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris won the 2020 election, and while this is generally a good thing, the current president has been acting … well, insane. I suspect we’re in for a bumpy few months until the new president and vice-president are inaugurated. Fingers crossed that we weather it well.

I've been spending (possibly an unreasonable amount of) time on social media, and have seen tons of tweets about how those of us who are happy about the election result should show empathy for those who are sad, because ostensibly “we know exactly how it feels, since we felt the same in 2016.” While I appreciate the sentiment, I’d like to offer an alternative viewpoint.

I think comparing how I felt in 2016 with how Trump supporters feel now is a false comparison. Because the truth is that as a black immigrant in a multiracial family, in November 2016, one of the most overwhelming emotions I felt was fear for my life and the lives of my family. And this was a constant background fear for the ensuing 4 years — in fact, for a considerable amount of time I had taken to carrying my American passport with me wherever I went, in case I was driving and got stopped. While my speaking accent sounds American for the most part, every now and then people hear something in my voice that makes them realize that I’m not American, and it always raises questions. If I got pulled over, I didn’t want the wrong questions to be asked, and if they did, I wanted to have proof of my citizenship on me. I tried to convince my parents, who do have strong Trinidadian accents, to do the same. Also, because of the president’s naked racism toward black and brown people in America, racists have felt particularly emboldened. So in the last year, after my daughter attained her driver’s license, there isn’t a moment when she’s driving that I’m not fervently praying not just that she won’t get pulled over; if she does, I’m equally prayerful that the cop she interacts with isn’t one of those emboldened racists.

And these are just two examples of how my fear manifested over the last few years. There are more. Many more.

So even while I understand that Trump supporters are disappointed right now, I suspect none of them fear for their lives as a result of this Biden/Harris win. There’s no reason to even begin to suspect this new administration will be threatening to put Trump supporters’ children in cages. Biden is extremely unlikely to signal to hate groups to stand back and stand by for the order to hurt Trump supporters. No one in this new administration will try to take away Trump supporters’ rights to love who they love. No one in this administration will suggest that Trump supporters’ heritages are from “shithole countries,” or threaten violence purely because of Trump supporters’ skin colour.

In other words, the disappointment Trump supporters are feeling right now is very different from what I personally felt in 2016. And to be clear, I am all about leading with love and light, and would never wish ill against those who support Trump. But the suggestion that I should embrace people whose mission has been to uphold a regime who hurt me, my family and people who look like me and my family, simply because they feel bad their candidate lost? Nah, son.

See, elections, by their nature, disappoint some people. And I definitely support the right of those who have been disappointed to hold current elected officials accountable. I also consider myself a pretty compassionate person — we don’t generally have to agree on much for you to earn an empathetic response from me. But, that said, I’ve never been a fan of The Giving Tree, and I'm afraid the baseline for my welcoming embrace is, at the very minimum, your recognition of my humanity. That I'm deserving of the same human rights as you. If you can’t do that, well — again, I wish you no ill or hatred, but I’m not going to feel sorry for you, either. This is me, setting a hard boundary.

That said, I think of the words of my friend, the amazing civil rights activist, Valarie Kaur. Her entire work is based on the concept of revolutionary love, and so I was thrilled to interview her for my upcoming book, The Lightmaker’s Manifesto. As we talked, I asked her (with a healthy amount of skepticism), how it’s possible to love people who are racist or actively hate everything that I am. And she said something that blew my mind.

“When you have a knee on your neck, and you are gasping for breath,” she began, “it is not your role in that moment to look up at your oppressor and wonder about them, and try to love them. Your job is to take the next breath. Your job is to survive.” Amazing, right? However, she went on to say that if you are someone who is not oppressed by the oppressor, it might be your job to listen to their stories and understand where the pain comes from, and tend to their wounds so that they stop oppressing. “Somebody has to help them through that process,” she explained, “it just doesn’t have to be you.”

So. Again, I’m not going to be the one empathizing with my oppressors — but perhaps, if you’re not a member of an oppressed class, maybe it is your job to listen and continue to work on making a change. If you’re a person with great racial, national, or religious privilege, those who don’t share your privileges are counting on you to do something. Perhaps you should be listening and tending to the oppressor’s stories. And to be clear, I’m not talking about Giving Tree blind-ass love, either — even you should set boundaries with what’s okay, and what’s not okay. So I’m not sure what exactly you should be doing.

But as Valarie says, somebody has to help them through the process of changing hearts to be less racist, less oppressive. It just doesn’t have to be me.