Allyship isn’t a one-time thing — it’s a series of investments. Here are some concrete actions you can take to support people of color in Trump's America.
Ah, 2016.
That was the year of the nationwide dumpster fire, we’ll tell our grandchildren one day. The year the Warriors blew a 3–1 lead in the finals. The year we lost David Bowie, Prince, and Vine. The year a man successfully campaigned on racism, misogyny, and anti-immigrant sentiment all the way to the highest office in the land.
Things have felt confusing, scary, and downright dystopian in the two weeks since the election. Projections about the future make me feel like I’m living inside hastily written chapters from a rejected Margaret Atwood novel (“a little heavy-handed with the metaphors, don’t you think?”).
There’s a whole lot of terrifying (and fake!) news out there. There’s been an alarming resurgence of hate crimes against people of various backgrounds, with no sign of slowing down anytime soon. With so much happening so fast, it’s hard for anyone to know what to do except lie in bed crying and making memes. But chances are, if you’re white and you’re feeling overwhelmed right now, the people of color in your life are dealing with even more compounded forms of stress and straight-up fear — and for good reason.
When the news of Donald Trump winning the election first started to pour in, my phone became a life raft. Texts and calls and DMs and emails from other people of color rolled in urgently, each one bleeding into the next for days on end: “Are you alone? Are you okay? Are we okay? I love you. I saw this coming, but I’m scared. We will keep going. We have to keep going.” We held each other because we had to. Because we have to.
But the sparse messages from white friends were less steady, more unsure: “How could this have happened?” and “I don’t know what to do” flanked each “How are you?” The requests came soon after, the way they often do. “How do I fix this? What do we — white people — do?”
Exhausted and overwhelmed, I didn’t have answers at first. I needed rest before I could respond. Before I could teach, before I could reach back into my experiences organizing on campus and beyond to do this newly urgent work. But now, two weeks and several terrifying cabinet appointments later, I want to help teach them how to build us all a raft. Show them how to be the most helpful friends they can during these ominous times. So I pulled together this very nonexhaustive list of ways to help. We’ve entered a new storm, but lessons from the past can still guide us. Here’s a start.
“She formed her life day by day, taking as its materials the emptiness and panic as well as the rushes, like fever, of contentment. I am beyond fear of solitude, she thought, I am past it. The idea thrilled her. I am beyond it and I will not sink. This submission, this triumph made her stronger. It was as if finally, after having passed through inferior stages, her life had found a form worthy of it.”
― James Salter, Light Years
this chart is so fucking funny to me because the “least popular baby names” would logically have never been used, but hundreds of kids were named these horrid names, i Love it
discoholicmusic
dailybridgerton
prguitarman
origamiaround
blakekathryn
izzy806
titsay
