Now that Trump is self-destructing, I feel even those in swing states have the opportunity to vote their conscience. — Susan Sarandon
An open letter to Susan Sarandon:
You were wrong.
You were dead f-ing wrong. And in a way, we all were. None of us saw this coming. None of us believed that a man with bankruptcies, no job experience, and no resume could possibly defeat a woman who not only had all the credentials (and then some) but had given her life to this country and to the ALL the people in it before she even applied for the job.
But where all of our collective wrongness leaves you is not the same space where your wrongness leaves me. And as a queer woman of color, I fear for all shades of myself. But then again, what do you know of fear other than ‘it wasn’t enough for you?’ And what, pray tell, is it that you have to fear exactly? Job loss affecting your $50 million net worth? Your family getting deported? Your student debt rising? Your right to vote being revoked?
The fear of Donald Trump wasn’t real enough for you because you face no real life-threatening backlash from the prospect of living four years in a Trumped-Up America and economy poses.
But we — the people of color, the queer, the women of color, the immigrants — do. And we are the one’s who are ultimately going to pay the price for your crystal clear conscience.
How does knowing that you perpetuated white feminist stereotypes of not seeing your brothers and sisters struggles sit with you? How does it feel to feed your privileges spaces of interests without worrying about the direct and dire consequences your actions will have on your community? How does it feel to fight for an ideology of the self vs. the reality of others?
You boldly proclaimed you wouldn’t “vote with your vagina,” but instead you voted with your race, your privilege and your class. You voted, and called for others to vote, in a manner that left your family of many colors behind because the reality of what might happen if Trump was elected was never really that real to you anyway.
Because you get to wake up today, tomorrow and every day in your bed of privilege free from the threat of harm and onslaught of daily hate. You get to walk out of your $1.5 million dollar penthouse without the fear of it or yourself being vandalized, beaten, or killed. You get to love and marry without the fear of it not being protected under the law. You get a pass to move about freely in a Trumped-Up America because you do not wear 99.9% of your rights on your body, visible to the world around you.
You can’t pick someone out of a line-up that they easily blend into. And there is no real threat against you and your life as you have always known it.
But there is for me. There is for my partner, my best friends, my family both chosen and blood, my brown, black, Muslim, native people brothers and sisters, for refugees, for immigrants. And while all this feels and reads personal, i’m not just blaming you. I’m smart enough to know that the issues stem far beyond the scope of any single person; you, however, were not. You couldn’t expand past your white female privilege and disdain for presumed ‘corruption’ to see that sometimes the world isn’t always what it appears to be.
But WE know because we do not have the privilege of waking up with rose tinted glasses. We rise every day fully aware that the chasm between what our country says it is and what we feel and experience around us is deep and wide. Did you think about that when you cast your ballot?
Well, I hope your vagina is happy.
And I hope you woke up yesterday morning, with the clearest most spotless conscience on the planet. Because that’s what you were fighting for.
The rest of us?
We were just fighting for our basic human rights guaranteed to us by the constitution of the United States of America.
But I believe in second chances. I believe that we can redeem ourselves — and we have to if we are going to make it through the next four years alive. So, my sister, I ask, where is your rebel voice now? How loudly will you shout and scream for us and our rights that are about to stripped away? How will your ideology shift now that our reality is not the one we all expected?
So far, your silence says it all. But I cling to what little hope remains in me that you and the rest of the world will prove me — and the rest of my angry brothers and sisters — dead fucking wrong.
Signed in hopeful solidarity,
Brandi Amara Skyy
Dear Susan Sarandon: Hope You’re Happy That Your Protest Vote Put My Rights At Risk was originally published on globalgrind.com
