On November 8th, I woke up with an ominous feeling. I had known that the results of the election would cause a divide within America, regardless of which candidate won. I, like many Hillary Clinton supporters, wrongly assumed that she would win. There was no way she could lose to a businessman who has openly shown hate to females, members of the LGBT community, and minorities. At first I was angry and incredibly disappointed, and according to social media, so were most of my friends. As the day after the election wore on, the messages started turning from disgust and anger to messages of hope. And that is what I want to talk about right now. Hope.
Right now, all eyes are on America trying to see what our next step is. The way I see it, we have two options: we can be a nation divided by those who oppose Donald Trump and those who supported him OR both sides can join together to work on fixing the race, gender, and sexuality issues that plague our nation. I do not believe every Trump supporter is racist, sexist or homophobic. Rather, many of the Trump supporters that I have met did not vote for him on the grounds that he was any of those things but because of their distrust of politics in general. We may be unhappy with America’s choice in the election, but we can make the best of the situation by spreading hope and love. You get nowhere by fighting hatred with hatred.
Hope and change often go hand in hand. You keep making changes in hopes that someone will listen and side with you. Change starts as a small action started by one individual that eventually grows into something that can affect an entire nation and eventually the world. For example, women receiving an equal education used to be taboo or seen as impossible. However, now most of the Western world views education as a right for everyone, not just males, and this belief continues to spread across the world. Why? This increased equality in education was due to more and more women becoming educated and speaking up for what they believed, until it eventually became the norm. In order to make a similar change, we can all start by educating ourselves on the people we share the nation with. We can do this by consciously making the decision to interact with more people who are different from us, whether it is a difference in values, culture, gender, color, socioeconomic status, sexuality, etc. Since coming to Boston University, I have been able to do this almost every single day. Before college, I thought I was a pretty accepting person, but upon moving to the city where people from all walks of life surround me, my eyes have been opened. It may due to the fact that I go to an extremely liberal school, but so far the people I met all have the same belief, which is to make the world a better place to live in where people are seen as equals.
How do we treat people as equals? Give everyone a fair chance. Listen to what they have to say before you dismiss them. You do not always have to agree with their opinions but the least you can do is give them a chance. Build up that habit now and then continue with it throughout life because you are someone’s acquaintance, friend, peer, partner, kid, and for some, a parent. The way you treat people can change how someone else treats people. If you treat people with respect, others will follow.
At the end of the day, America is the place we call home, and for the next four years, Donald Trump will be the person sitting in the Oval Office. That is something we cannot change. However, there are things we can change. If Hillary Clinton had been elected, she would have been the first female president, a huge step towards women’s equality. It would have shown young girls that women have just as much a right to a position of enormous leadership as men and that being a female should not stop anyone from dreaming big. It also would show the world that America will not elect anyone who is intolerant of those who are different in color, sexuality, or whether or not they are natural born or an immigrant. It would have been an amazing step forward, except it did not happen. To me, that does not necessarily mean that America has failed us. It means we have a lot more of work to do. I do think as a nation we took a few steps back in terms of social progress, but the only way to move it forward is to get back to work on fixing the issues that are rampant in our country. We must show the world that despite our President’s beliefs, we are not a nation filled with racist, sexist and homophobes.
Just because Clinton lost the election does not mean that all those rights many of us value are dead. Eventually there will be a female president. There will eventually be a president from the LGBT community. We already had our first African American president and I am confident that there will be more to follow. We just need to come together again and have hope.
