As a millennial, pre-election 2016 I had the common notion that racism and ignorance was out, and acceptance was in. My parents taught me that everyone is equal no matter what race, gender, disability, or sexuality. Of course, I saw occasional Facebook posts with racist comments against immigrants and against those who have faced police brutality. I always thought of these people as idiots who were raised by idiots, trapped in a cycle of idiocy.
When the primaries began, I noticed the Trump supporters were slowly but surely rising. All at once, my news feed was bombarded with racist and ridiculous posts pertaining to Trump and the presidential election. It seemed that bigots, what I thought was the bottom five percent of people, had turned out to be around thirty or forty percent of our population. So how has this happened to our society? How has so much ignorance and hate been apart of our community? Weren’t we taught in school that racism and prejudices were basically over after the civil rights movement?
While heading out for a fun time with friends a few nights ago, our Uber driver was listening to a political radio station. He then said something that really made me think, “This campaign did not cause this bigotry and racism in our country, it only brought it to light.” Are we still the same nation we were circa 1960? Our society’s progression have been built off the voices of the youth, like the Freedom Riders, feminists, and the LGBTQ community. Many of these people and those who stood by them risked their lives to make a change they believed in. Massive groups used to come together to demand change, today most of us just get into to arguments on Facebook posts we don't agree with. In the words of Edmund Burke “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.
So to the ladies and gentleman who are against police brutality, sexism, hate crimes, racism, and everything that has to do with that so called candidate Donald Trump, congrats to us! If this is all we have done since Trump announced his presidency, he really is the man we deserve to run our country. Why have we not cared enough to join those fighting and campaigning for Bernie Sanders,Hillary Clinton, or Third Party Candidates? Why haven’t more of us been present at the Anti-Trump rallies? Many of us didn't even bother to vote in the primaries! At the end of the day, Hillary will likely become the first female president, but in a nation where many millennials have no motivation to fight for what we believe in, it is likely we will be seeing Trump 2.0 in the election of 2020.
