Right now, there is no other news than that of President-elect Donald Trump. Newspapers all over the world covered the United States presidential election with great scrutiny because the rest of the world seems to understand that whatever the U.S. does affects the nature of international relations.
But this is not another 400 words of how Trump will break the U.S. and the rest of the world with his lack of policy. These are 400 words on how people can no longer mourn democracy because it never existed in the first place. It’s time to stop mourning the Electoral College system because it was never designed to be the voice of the people. It was created as a way to ensure racism, and today it is the way to systematically elect the rights of white people over the rights of everyone else.
This is a call to action for all journalists. For the next four years, journalists must address structural discrimination, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia to upset the narrative that has been shoved down the country’s throat by mainstream media through regurgitating facts and quotes from Trump that implicitly promote misogyny and racism. This is an invitation, fellow journalists, to let go of objectivity, to cut the rope that is choking the principles that journalism was founded on: being the check and balance on systems, institutions and government.
This is a call to action for all minorities — racial minorities, sexual minorities, religious minorities — to not sit silently, because sitting silently is allowing a man with no regard for anyone to dictate what people’s rights are and what value a person has. The sociopolitical system of the U.S. has never actually allowed minorities to have equal rights, but now is not the time to wallow in fear and watch more rights get taken away. Now is not the time to allow all the progress that has come out of the last eight years to dissipate and scatter. Much worse has been endured.
This is a call to action for this country to educate itself and understand that demagogues like Trump will never cease to exist until whitewashed education embraces the multidimensionality of U.S. history.
If there is something good that came out of this election, it is the fact that under Trump, almost no one is safe from being attacked. Even white people will eventually see how Trump’s nationalist industry will hurt their pockets — outsourcing saves corporations money. So maybe, just maybe, the unjust institution of discrimination will slowly come to an end. But this only happens when mourning ends.