A Black Man in Trump’s America

A Black Man in Trump’s America

Let me start by saying that the 2016 Presidential Election was an absolute CIRCUS.  I’m a relatively young guy; I’ll be transparent in saying I didn’t follow politics much prior to that point.  Man, I picked the right election to follow things.  It was literally like reality TV: You got people bragging about how much money they have; people forgetting their lines on television, so they have an embarrassing meltdown; tasteless jokes and comments about race; lewd comments about people having small hands because they have small male parts; insults about people’s families; beef getting stirred up on Twitter; etc.  And who can forget the plot twists!  Plot Twist: Hillary’s under investigation.  Plot Twist: Bernie Sanders is sick and tired of hearing about Hillary’s emails.  Plot Twist: Donald Trump is the least racist person we know.  Plot Twist: Trump will not publish his tax returns.  Plot Twist: The Russians may or may not have intervened in our 2016 election, and that would represent the first intervention of a foreign country in a US election in American history.  Bigger Plot Twist: For reasons we still have yet to determine, the Russians wanted Hillary to lose and Trump to win.  Even Bigger Plot Twist: The Donald is President.  THE DONALD!  You can’t make this up, guys.

You have to admit, it’s like watching a season of reality TV.  Except we’re talking about the next 4 to 8 years of American history, so the stakes are a bit higher than Jersey Shore, Flavor of Love, or something along those lines.  What’s crazy to me though is the 11-month stretch leading up to the election.  To my point on reality TV, so many of us were entertained but didn’t actually take Trump seriously as a candidate.  Instead, we thought he was trolling us, or there was some bet among the elites of the world and Trump would drop out after he collected his earnings, or some other nonsensical conspiracy theory.   Either way, there did seem to be an underlying notion: this is not the guy we want as President.  Somehow though, I still woke up November 9^th to a notification on my phone informing me that The Donald was elected President of the United States of America.

Get the heck out of here with that stuff, man.  Yo, who voted for this guy???

I’ll admit, I tend to have a certain demographic of people in my social circle.  I earned a bachelor’s degree from a well-known state school, so most of my friends do have a college education.  I studied finance and economics in undergrad, so many of my classmates in the business school tend to work in larger US cities, where there are an abundance of Fortune 500’s (the exception being if they’re in a distribution center, which tend to be located in more rural areas).  When I graduated from school, I spent 3 years working in Philadelphia, which is the 5^th largest city in the country and has a population that’s 46% black.  Even now, I’m enrolled in a PhD program in an urban city down south, so I find myself interacting with a certain demographic of people.  And, of course, I’m Nigerian, so I do have a good deal of friends who are black or African.  It’s certainly possible, just based on my experiences/demographics/career trajectory, I tend to have conversations mostly with people who didn’t take The Donald particularly seriously.  Still though, something is not adding up.

It’s been 2 years.  There’s only 1 conclusion I’ve managed to come to: some of you guys voted for him.  You’re not keeping it 100 with me, man!  I don’t blame you for wanting to keep it under wraps though.  The way Trump carries himself, supporting him is somewhat of a liability.  You never know what he’s going to say.  You never know what he’ll do in a press conference.  Only Lord knows what this man is going to retweet.  I totally understand why you don’t want to openly support him, but that notion also makes it difficult to know who your allies are as you try and help America strive for racial equity.  At least during the election, this guy had a ton of ‘closet supporters’.  Post-election, I think people have been a bit more transparent, but during the election, it’s almost like we made a laughing stock of his supporters.  We shamed them.  Nobody wanted to come out and say they were voting for him, because they were scared of the backlash.  But people definitely did, even if they had to do it in secret.

I remember for a few days following the election I was somewhat disappointed.  Sure, I know God has all of this figured out, but that’s actually not what I was unsettled about.  I was disappointed in America.  Call me naïve, but isn’t civility and respect for all types of people supposed to be a core element of American values?  Things like equity and inclusivity… for a nation as diverse as America, aren’t these supposed to be core values?  If not, then why the heck are we all here?  God help us if there are 320 million people, FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, living together and we don’t subscribe to notions like equity and inclusivity, right?  The reason why I was disappointed was because, in a SPECTACULAR way, my impression of the election is these are not nearly as important to America as I previously thought.  To be clear, for 320 million people, I, of course, knew some people cared far less about those values than others.  But my impression of the election was, by definition, MOST people don’t care about those values nearly as much as I thought.  For extenuating circumstances (desperate times call for desperate measures!), we’re willing to compromise on those principles.

And as a black man living in America, that doesn’t bode particularly well for me.

Same old story, guys.  As a black man, I can’t help but wonder if my fellow Americans celebrate my Nigerian heritage and culture or if they simply tolerate me as an immigrant from a crap-hole country.  As a black PhD student, I can’t help but wonder if people are excited to see a bit more diversity on campus, or if they see me and assume the university would have been better off without me.  As I attend school for the next 5 years in a predominantly white community, I can’t help but wonder if some people feel the community is taking a turn for the worst, because so many black students are starting to show up… in case you were wondering, that tends to be how I, and some other black people, interpret ‘Make America Great Again’: lets return to a whiter, purer form of American life, where we didn’t have to worry about (strange) immigrants from so many different countries threatening our lifestyle!

Yo, son, who voted for this guy???

Not only that, but in my humble opinion, the 2016 election highlighted some of the unsettling double standards present in America… dare I even say privilege (I’ve expanded, at length on that, last month in a 3-part series on privilege).  As a black man, I’ve been told I need to carry myself with integrity and respect, if I want people to take me seriously.  Be tactful in my communication.  Be diplomatic, so as not to offend people.  Be confident, but don’t be arrogant… people don’t like that.  In the absence of these things, your career is in great jeopardy.  I think MOST people are told these types of things, but as an underrepresented minority (ie. black, woman, LGBT), these are especially important if you’re going to be accepted.  Indeed, there’s research that shows that when minorities are not, the penalties are actually higher.

Not so for Donald Trump.  All of that goes out the window.  Heck, insult handicapped people.  Make lewd comments about women, or your male parts.  Describe someone’s country as a crap hole… why not?  Tell the whole world you think you could shoot someone in the middle of Time Square and still win the election (he did say that, and he did win).    My conclusion: being loud, rich, and white (and male) goes a long way in American society.  So much in fact that if you don’t have some of these other things, like courtesy, diplomacy, respect, tactfulness, etc., we’re willing to overlook all that.

Serendipitously enough, some of my research in organizational behavior will be studying exactly that, in the context of work.  Corporate America is dominated by powerful (older) white men, and in many cases, we let them do whatever they want.  Personally, I think it’s fascinating.

But let’s talk about how we got here.  I get it, “America is in a desperate situation!”  Sure.  Donald Trump is just being honest about what America needs… and Americans are willing to vote for him, because they’re desperate.  But is this really the first time in American history that we’ve been desperate?

We weren’t desperate when we criminalized former slaves after the Civil War, so we could throw them in prison, rent them out to businesses, and make them rebuild the South for free?

We weren’t desperate when we used state-sanctioned birth control and mass sterilization campaigns to control the reproduction of ‘undesirable’ populations within the US, including but not limited to black people?

We weren’t desperate when we tried to recruit blacks to fight a war in Vietnam, even though we didn’t want to give them equal rights in the country they were fighting (and dying) to protect?

Two thoughts… 1.  America has seen many, MANY desperate days in its history.  2.  Desperate situations, in America, tend not to work out so well for minority groups.  So, if America is desperate, or America is getting desperate, what exactly do I have to look forward to as a young black man living in America?

Maybe they’ll pack me up in a box and ship me back to Nigeria.  Who knows.  Yo, who voted for this guy???

There’s more though.  In spite of Trump’s many, many comments about black people (and Hispanic people, and Muslims, and women), he insists that he’s an ally.  Not only that, but his supporters believe they’re allies, too.  I think only a small minority of men and women voted for Trump with explicitly racist motivations.  The majority of his voters would not self-identify in that way, and I’ll go as far as to say most have the best of intentions.  They’re upstanding people.  But that can create…complications.

If Trump can make the comments he does about blacks (and other minority groups, too) and continues to self-identify as an ally, aren’t we going to have a number of ‘faux’ allies among our legitimate ones?  This isn’t overkill, guys.  As a minority, whether that be a religious minority (Muslim), gender minority (woman), racial minority (ie. Hispanic), or lifestyle minority (LGBT), allies are EXTREMELY important.  More specifically, you need allies in the MAJORITY group.  Without white men, the Civil Rights Movement would have only gone so far.  I think that’s even truer for the Women’s Rights Movement.  You need prominent, respected individuals supporting a cause in order for it to gain traction.  We need allies.  The problem is, people are starting to subscribe to this notion that you can say and do whatever you want and still call yourself a supporter of marginalized groups.  I’ll be honest, although our president certainly didn’t create that situation, I certainly think he makes it worse with what he says, does, and retweets (implicit approval of others commentary).

This isn’t like the Civil Rights Movement… back then, if people weren’t about equal rights for all Americans, they were pretty transparent about it.  Today, you have people who lowkey subscribe to notions of white supremacy, but they’re pretty tactful in how they go about sharing that.  Honestly, it makes communities of color very, very cynical.  Myself included, to be honest.  “Who’s in it with me?  Who’s a supporter?  Who can I trust?  Where are my allies?  Not the ‘All Lives Matter’ and ‘White History Month’ and Heterosexual Parade’ allies, but my REAL allies.”  In some ways, you have to be cynical.  America had everybody convinced that Trump was a big joke, and then people went out there and voted for him… yes, you’ll have to forgive black people for being a tad bit cynical post-election.

Yo, son, I said who voted for this guy???  We did, America. This is the man we chose.

Call me idealistic, but it just doesn’t seem consistent with the narrative I grew up hearing in America.  Integrity.  Honesty.  Respect.  Inclusivity.  Love.  Acceptance.  Tact.  Diplomacy.  I think this is further complicated by the fact that this would all be far, far less likely if Donald Trump was any other race.  Can you imagine a black man running for President, saying he can shoot someone in Time Square and still win the election?  Can you imagine a black man running for President, calling women (Rosie O’Donnel or otherwise) fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and/or disgusting animals?  Can you imagine a black man running for President, and trying to dismiss a video where he appears to be bragging about sexual assault as “locker room talk”?  Coincidentally, or perhaps not so coincidentally, all of these seem to fit the narrative of black men in America.  But suffice to say I don’t think that Trump would have experienced the success he did if he were Black, Hispanic, Asian, or any other race for that matter.

We didn’t call him a thug.  We didn’t call him a rapist.  Not only that, but we commended him, instead, saying that he tells it like it is.

It’s not about Democrats and Republicans.  It’s not really my interest the party you support or vote for.  That’s probably the least important part of all of this.  What is important, though, is the lens through which we make sense of cultural and historic developments.  I’m a social scientist, so that’s my interest.  The 2016 election was just that, both a cultural and historic development.  It was quite unlike any election in the history of modern America.

I’m reminded of what I heard one day when I was watching the NBA (semi) finals, many moons ago.  The Oklahoma Thunder were playing (and losing) to the San Antonio Spurs.  The commentator said something absolutely profound.  He said, “You know, in moments of stress, a team tends to expose who they really are and revert back to what’s most familiar.”  He was commenting on the final 3 minutes of the game. The Thunder just couldn’t hold it together.  They were leading most of the game.  The Spurs made it close in the final 3 minutes.  Under the pressure of the moment: 3 minutes left of game play, best of 7 series, NBA semifinals, a young and inexperienced (albeit very talented) team of superstars, etc., they just couldn’t hold it together.  They probably should have won, but they lost.

Under the stress of the moment, they had a complete and utter meltdown.  It was embarrassing.  His commentary, I think, was absolutely profound.

His metaphor isn’t unlike the case of America.  Call it whatever you want… a desperate situation; a new chapter in American history; fear of ISIS, Muslims, immigrants, people of color, or some other type of xenophobia; an irrational fear of change; etc.  At the close of 2016, America was convinced that it was in the midst of a distressing situation (in general, I think all politicians attempt to convince Americans of that during an election, to build interest and gain support), and Donald Trump was able to appeal to America because he represented something comfortable and familiar.  He represented where America came from.  It’s right there in his slogan: Make America Great Again.  “Let’s relive the ol’ glory days.”  America was distressed, and we showed our true colors.  All we did was revert back to what’s most familiar.

Who voted for this guy???  We did, America.  It was there all along… a deep yearning for something safe, familiar, and secure… we just needed a distressing situation to bring it out.  That’s not specific to America.  Everyone shows their true colors when they’re distressed, you and me included.  America just happened to do it in a spectacular way, on a grand stage, when the entire world was watching.

But I do take hope.  I think we learn from our experiences, and they make us better moving forward.  If nothing else, all of this produced a [very] thought-provoking conversation.  I thought so, at least.

Signed,

A Black Man in Trump’s America