It’s been an awfully long 19 months since January of 2017, and longer still for people who more acutely feel the negative effects of the events that have transpired since then. Women, Muslims, transgenders, the entire LGBTQ+ community, and of course people of every color but white have been burdened with a sense of dread that their particular cross-section of humanity would be the next target of the Trump administration. Each has been correct.
But there is a certain comfort to be taken in knowing that the phenomenon that allows an overtly white supremacist administration to maintain control and set policy is unique to a small but vocal segment of the United States population.
Sure, there is a fervent hope that the votes “flipped” in the upcoming elections, both midterm and in 2020, are not just from red to blue, but from non-voter to voter. But in poll after poll, survey after survey, and in countless examples every day, Americans prove that they are inclusive, compassionate, and yes, liberal.
A majority favor women’s rights and equal pay. Most want to do something immediately about climate change. A staggering number favor increased gun control. Most Americans, in fact, have evolved enough in terms of acceptance that “gender non-conforming” is a thing now, and Americans accept and embrace it in large part (although we can do better in all of these areas).
So it’s helpful here and there to hear people from outside the sphere of American political influence tell us that we aren’t crazy. That’s why this video from January of the spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights speaking frankly about Donald Trump shortly after his “shithole countries” comment has been resonating so much since it resurfaced online:
These are shocking and shameful comments from the President of the United States. I’m sorry, but there’s no other word one can use but ‘racist.’ You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as ‘shitholes,’ whose entire populations who are not white are therefore not welcome. The positive comment on Norway makes the underlying sentiment very clear. And like the earlier comments made vilifying Mexicans and Muslims, the policy proposals targeting entire groups on grounds of nationality or religion, and the reluctance to clearly condemn the anti-Semitic and racist actions of the white supremacists in Charlottesville — all of these go against the universal values the world has been striving so hard to establish since World War II and the Holocaust.”
Watch the video here, and remember that you’re not alone and that change is coming, though it sometimes seems not as quickly as oppressed groups would hope.
Featured image via screen capture
