2018 Midterm Elections: AKA White People LOVE White Supremacy
This morning my S.O. said, “I didn’t do it.”
This is what we tell each other when one of us needs to rage and we need assurance that the rage isn’t directed at either of us. As today is the post-election hopelessness, rage, disappointment, fear, and reaffirmation that white people ain’t shit, he needs the reassurance that I don’t hate him.
And this morning when he said, “I didn’t do it,” all I could say was, “you say you didn’t do it and I’m supposed to trust that and right now I don’t because too many of your people did and I need space to work through that.”
It wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. It wasn’t the answer I wanted to give. We voted side by side together. We talked about the issues together. He was the most openly political I’ve ever seen him but he’s white and white people are trash at almost every opportunity. And even when they aren’t openly trash, they are behind the scenes trash. Secret “let’s just not get caught” trash. Fucking trash.
Across the country we see open racists being elected. Dead, openly racist white men are being elected. We saw some wins throughout the country, and for that I’m proud, but Georgia and Florida have a ways to go.
Florida elected a man who referred to his opponent, Andrew Gillum, as a monkey, has white supremacists doing robocalls, and openly aligns with that vermilion vomit calling himself president. And 4 million people voted for him, winning by a margin of 0.07% — 55,439 votes. Gillum conceded in Florida, a decision I strongly disagree with, by the way.
In Georgia, we have the man who has openly unregistered voters for the past two years running for governor having never recused himself from his position on the election oversight committee — a job he’s fucked up and actually exposed the voting data of 6 million people. Despite this, he still ran for governor and currently leads with 75,386 votes. As of this moment, Abrams is not conceding, and I agree with that decision. There were too many obvious issues with the voting process, from 4 hour wait times, not enough machines, machines going down and halting voting…cuz they do this on a work day and many jobs don’t pay you when you go vote. It’s a system designed to intentionally discourage voting for people who are financially vulnerable, and that’s not even including the numerous ways Black historically democrat voters were purged from the polls.
It’s fucking intentional and I don’t know to keep processing this and thinking I can do anything about this. I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep going year after year looking at these people and watching them shoot themselves in the foot time and again in their incessant need to harm Black people. And white women…I am genuinely surprised that I still have any empathy left to lose for you ridiculous people. I’m tired of seeing this shit and living in this shit and coping with this shit and getting repeatedly pummeled into the dirt by white supremacists and their fucking asinine bullshit.
It’s not so much that they lost or are close to losing…it’s the volume of people who voted for known white patriarchal supremacists and clearly seek out and support that agenda. This isn’t people voting for the lesser monster. These are people who want the monsters and I’m fucking exhausted.
Yesterday I told my S.O. that I’m pretty tired of existing and he immediately went on alert. I’m not aggressive about it, but I’m over this. I’m over the constant gaslighting, the lies, the excuses, the random acts of psychological violence whiteness loves to indulge themselves in inflicting. I’m tired of having to protect myself from white people, men, Black people who want white approval, non-Black POCs who want to align with whiteness, white Hispanics, every fucking person who gets a kick out of amassing power to act like white people…
I’m just fucking tired and I don’t know what to do anymore.
Except I do know what to do.
I’ll do what I always do. I’ll mourn. I’ll sleep. I’ll take a time-out from unnecessary people. I’ll take shit day by day until I’ve regrouped enough to figure out what the fuck to do next. It’s what I do. It’s what I have to do.
But right now, I’m hurting and I gotta tend to that.
And such is life as a Black woman in amerikkka.
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Originally published at talynnkel.com.
