It's been a rough week for everyone. I've cried my tears, gone through the appetite fluctuations, slept off headaches, and I'm still not where I feel I can be eloquent about this election's result and the things it reveals about the mindset of the American people. People are hurting and are terrified of what a Trump presidency means for them not only through policies his soon-to-be administration supports, but through the behavior he enabled through his election by validating the racist, Islamophobic, sexist, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic views this country already held.
I'm hurt by the results of the election, and I'm terrified by what this means on a local, domestic, and global scale. But the fact that I, a straight, cisgender, Christian woman, who was raised in a two-parent home on the north side of Chicago, can step back and analyze the repercussions of his win puts me at a view similar to that of Geoffrey Chaucer (a dead English writer I learned about in an honors-level British literature class I took in high school).
I remember being in 7th and 8th grade, silently angered at the fact that the admission standards for the city's top high schools would be higher for me just because of the affluent neighborhood I lived in. I was dumb, I was naïve. I grew up and lived in a two-parent home and couldn't "cheat the system" by applying to schools with the address of the parent in the "worst neighborhood" out of the two. I was problematic. I didn't know what xenophobia was until I was 16-years-old and learning about Great Britain's political climate in an AP-level class, one of the 20+ my high school offered.
Illinois is a blue pond in a red Midwest, and Chicago is a blue island in Illinois' sea of red. I've been privileged enough to know only diversity and food in the closest grocery store as facts of life, not feeling the effects of Chicago's forced housing segregation laws, or seeing the farmland of families competing with ConAgra. For me, Chicago is diverse, a beautiful, gleaming city by the lake, with a thriving arts culture, protected by buildings taller than you can imagine. It's not food deserts and homogeneity and racial slurs.
Downtown, Oak Street, and the Gold Coast didn't seem like a different city to me, they were within walking distance. I never encountered gang violence. My daily anxieties were not those shared by the grand majority of my peers within the city limits. I worry about my quirky artistic neighborhood being further gentrified by uptight, affluent college alums moving to the city for job opportunities, and bars.
There are parts of the city that are still, in fact, off-limits to people like me. The working-class blue-collar parts that can freely and boldly act upon White Nationalism. I live far enough away that I can ignore it, but it is still part of Chicago when I say “Chicago”, and like anything south of Madison, it's still part of my home and I have a responsibility to care for it and better it, because our local and state governments have proven time and time again that it is too daunting of a task for them to attempt.
This is why I'm in college seeking a degree in music education. The return of investment may not be amazing, but it's something. Music gives people the sense of purpose and sense of belonging a gang can provide. But unlike the many gangs in Chicago, it's a freeing experience that gives you hope for the future, and I'm ready to open minds and hearts.
