By Taylor Allen

 

Donald Trump is officially the 45th president elect of America. He won with 276 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 228. 

He got the key swing states, which included both Florida and Pennsylvania. Although I stared at my television past 3 a.m. when it was formally announced, I knew Clinton was done after she lost Florida.

Clinton lost Florida, but won the popular vote, and Gary Johnson, who was the main third party candidate, received the largest amount of votes for any third-party candidate within the last 20 years. This sounds just like the 2000 election because it is. 

People who decided not to vote, wrote in whoever they wanted, or voted for a third-party candidate contributed to Clinton losing the election. I don’t blame them, at least not completely. I’ve never been a die-hard Clinton fan. I recognize that she has her faults with the Clinton Foundation, her track-record with her husband’s 1994 Crime Bill that contributed to our nation’s current mass incarceration problem, and her funding of foreign countries with incredibly sexist institutions. All that is true. However, my rationale was that at least my rights wouldn’t be taken away.

As a bisexual black woman, my rights were not something I was willing to risk.

Although as I previously stated, I’m not going to put all the blame on my more stubborn left-wing liberals. They were not the main problem. White men and white women were and remain the problem. White people overwhelming, regardless of age group, voted for Trump.

 

If you break it down even further, 63 percent of white men and 52 percent of white women voted for Trump. To give an even better context, 80 percent of black men, 93 percent of black women, 62 percent of Latino men, and 68 percent of Latina women voted for Clinton. Minorities overwhelmingly voted for the more progressive candidate. White America did this.  

I’m heartbroken. There really isn’t another way to put it. I underestimated how racist and sexist America tends to be. The worst part of this election isn’t even Trump becoming the president, furthering his hateful rhetoric. The worst part is knowing so many of my white counterparts, people I called my friends, secretly despise my community.

It’s hurtful logging onto Facebook and seeing my old high school friend perpetuate outdated stereotypes about the Black, Latino, Muslim and LGBTQ community. Hate for other people is so imbedded in our culture that people do not even realize or care about the potential damage a Trump presidency could inflict on various minority groups.

America voted for a man that tells women that they’re nothing but a sexual object, and that women don’t deserve basic health care; a man that tells Muslims that they are not welcomed here; a man that does not mind that his running mate tells young LGBTQ youth that they should convert to heterosexuality; a man that believes the mass incarceration of black men in this country is “law and order”; a man that tells Latino people that they are all “murderers and rapists” and that they are not welcomed in this country. 

I’m heartbroken because rural white America hates me. I’m heartbroken because I’ve been telling people for years to “stay woke”, but I’ve been the one who’s been asleep. I thought America was better than this.