November 9th.

I am scared.

Knowing that millions of people in this country hate people like me, people of color, women, scares me. My naive side asks, "Why?" Why do they hate us for no valid reason? I'm darker than you, I'm a woman, does that warrant hate, slander, disrespect?"

My knowledgeable side knows the answer to this question. This country was built on hatred and oppression, which people went through countless measures to try to justify. They have done nothing to right their wrongs. Black people are still being killed by the police, and people rush to justify their deaths. The KKK is still in action, but the government used COINTELPRO to disband the Black Panthers and Young Lords.

I am scared for not only myself, but for my loved ones. My family; my dad who consistently gets pulled over in our majority white & conservative hometown, my brother who is not entirely white passing but carries the weight of our obviously Hispanic last name, the mother of my baby sister who is as dark as me, my cousin who is also half black. My friends and loved ones; my best friend, my boyfriend, all of my friends who are in some way members of marginalized groups that have been targeted by the powers that be. Myself, and my tendency to brush off ignorance until I'm sitting by myself, realizing that what this person said was dumb (for lack of better word) and that I didn't do anything to put them in their place. I just let it happen.

I'm scared that a man further normalized racism, xenophobia, misogyny, ableism to a point that now see in front of my own two eyes instead of just being ingrained into our society. I don't even want to leave this relatively safe (yet still problematic) campus out of fear that some South Hadley conservative is going to say something to me. I don't want my boyfriend to drive or stay out for too long. I don't want to go back to my rural town. I'm afraid of having brown skin and the feeling of having a target on my back. I'm afraid that the progress we have made will be reversed by a bigot and a sexist homophobe who shouldn't have gotten this far in the first place. I feel like I don't belong. I'm not an American. I will adopt every other identity, Puerto Rican and Haitian, Latina and black, a woman, a New Yorker, a daughter, a big sister, before I call myself an American. I'm clearly not one, according to this election. Apparently I'm not deserving of humanity nor empathy. The majority liberal bubble of this campus has led me to believe that this country was making progress.

How foolish of me.