Goodbye, Barack (op/ed)

I, like a lot of people, have tried to outrun our shared reality, and its sentient complement of impending doom. Prior to the GOP nomination I enjoyed memes of Donald Trump, complete with his affinity for made up words, child-like faces made during political debates and in interviews, and laundry lists of the general then-laughable foolishness of the man I was familiarized with on NBC’ s Celebrity Apprentice. These memes were hilarious, but they were also more than that. They made us all feel safe.

Of course Donald Trump wouldn’t, couldn’t win this election.

And anyone who believed that this was anything more than a poorly-timed publicity stunt—and I’m still not convinced it wasn’t a social experiment gone horribly, atrociously, xenophobically wrong—was simply diluted. After all this was 2016 America. Not 1965 America. Not 1865 America. And we certainly we’re not 1935 Germany. We were living in the age of political correctness, of veiled racism, of an anti-black evil that has undergone the radical transformation from Mississippi tree limbs weighted by the decaying burden of Black bodies, to a body of White Americans that either knew better, or knew to hide the fact that they still knew evil. We just weren’t those people anymore.

And then he got the nomination.

Still, we assured ourselves. Surely, Trump wasn’t a real thing. Yes, he was getting closer. And yes, it was becoming a little uncomfortably close, but with each debate, my rising sense of panic was calmed. Even for all of America’s misogyny, and Hilary Clinton’s admitted sketchiness, there was simply no fucking way that we would elect a reality star and proud sexist/racist/xenophobe/homophobe over a career politician. It just wouldn’t happen.

………and…....then……..he…..won…….?

Still, my denial persisted. I just couldn’t accept it. I still found myself smirking at news updates, and laughing at the idiocy that was the White women that, as tweeter Feminista Jones so eloquently put it, “were willing to sacrifice themselves,” just to secure the status quo that for the past eight years, had been challenged by a Black man and woman from the South side of Chicago. But it wasn’t funny. And Obama’s farewell address finally made that real for me, for all of us.

Watching a Black man that is still fine after eight years and with some added salt where he was once opaquely peppered, a Black man who is, indeed, Black and proud after years of being reduced to playing politics, a Black man who has remained dignified in the face of blatantly anti-black disrespect from nation and political subordinate, a Black man that is still so Chicago after eight years in Washington, a Black man that, on the night of January 10^th remained supernaturally graceful, diplomatic, and secure in the face of a successor whose mere entry into office is an affront to his two terms, watching this man bid us farewell was as beautiful as it was heartbreaking. And when he tearfully thanked his wife, best friend, “girl from the South side of Chicago” Michelle, I cried, too.

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This winter break home from university, I’ve developed an NPR habit. And every morning, the airways are saturated with news about our President-elect—I should note that my fingers hovered over my keyboard’s P here, but while admirable, I find the #NotMyPresident movement a little juvenile. As painful as it is, Trump is our president. Asserting that he isn’t, while we are all bound to live and suffer in his America (with the exclusion of those who truly meant it when they said they would leave given his election) seems like an underdeveloped attempt at pushback. Still, I am out of solutions and generally shy away from being too critical of those engaged in activism at any level. Listening to NPR’s stories of Trump’s apparent and denied ties with Russia, of the Mexican workers and families who were devastated by the discontinuation of construction on the Ford plant that promised thousands of jobs, of the Muslim students on my  University campus who now fearfully board campus transportation after a Trump supporter threatened a Muslim student with a knife, may only be the beginning in a long line of the live collateral damage Trump and his cabinet seem determined to leave in the wake of what I hope will be their only term.

But while the collateral damage of one of America’s most epic mistakes is yet to be seen, those on the opposite end of this shitshow have been outted. We love to believe that we live in a world in which the dividing line between good and evil is thick and impenetrable enough to eliminate the possibility of a racist grey area. For the last eight years, many of us have been comforted by the mythical reality that the nice White people with whom we gossip at the gym, share intimate work space and carpool, those that outwardly abhor slavery and use of the N-word, are not racist. That push come to shove, they’ve got our back. We have placated ourselves with the foolish belief that our White acquaintances, and even friends, are diametrically opposed to those who defend the confederate flag as “a symbol of Southern pride,” to those who assembled plastic Obama figurines, lynched, and set them ablaze in 2008, to those who cry “but Black on Black violence!” in conversations about state sanctioned murder. But this God-forsaken election proves that these two groups are not necessarily polarized, distant, or even in conflict with one another. As a matter of fact, given our President-elect, one is forced to wonder whether they are even two separate groups at all. Of course, if a nappy-headed Black girl asserts that White people are racist until proven humane, she’s a “reverse racist.” And yet, America has elected a transparent White supremacist to the highest office in the nation…………………………………. we are living in a bizarre time.

The optimist in me combats my cynic’s decision that Trump’s election all but erases Obama, and the alleged progress in our eight years with him. But it is a losing battle. It seems pretty common sensical that Obama’s eight steps forward couldn’t have made any substantial impact, given that they were so easily succeeded by Trump’s sixteen steps back. So, with a heavy heart, we say goodbye to Barack Obama, and offer vacant, defeated apologies for our White co-workers, neighbors, and unfollowed Facebook friends. Once again, you all have completely fucking let us down.

Goodbye, Barack.