Yesterday at the Seattle Airport, my friend and I were watching the campaign unfold on TV as we were waiting at our gate. She’s Latina, and she turned to me and said, only half-jokingly, “I’m going to get deported.” I looked at her, and she quickly smiled. But there was genuine fear in her eyes.

I wanted to say, “We’ll be fine, Clinton will win.” But I wasn’t sure of this America anymore. I used to believe this was a country of tolerance, progress, and freedom. But in these past few months, I started doubting this image of America that had been sold to me. When Trump took the nomination for Republican candidate, when I started seeing the Trump signs appear on my neighbors’ yards, when my classmates started wearing Trump hats, I began to wonder. What does this country believe in?

People say they vote for Trump because they’re convinced that he’ll fix the economy, because they want change, because they’re tired of the elite in the Government, and the “system,” but frustration and disillusionment is only a superficial explanation.

What’s really going on is deeper, and uglier. It’s a truth that many of us are afraid to acknowledge.

Trump has won by capitalizing on fear, fear of our changing country and our changing demographics. The face of America is no longer a single color. By 2050, we will no longer be predominantly white, but rather a melting pot of blacks and Asians and Latinos. Trump’s success has been in appealing to the sleeping giant of voters, working class whites. He’s divided our country along the lines of “us” versus “them,” and given Americans faces to fear. It’s Mexicans that are taking our jobs, it’s the Syrian refugees that carry bombs on their backs, it’s the blacks shooting each other and selling drugs that create our crime rates. He appeals to racial resentment.
Even for those Trump supporters who claim that that they disagree with his prejudice, they are still protecting those views. By supporting him, they are making a statement: “His attacks on Latinos, Muslims, and women don’t matter to me.”

There are Trump supporters who ignore and dismiss his rhetoric, but that is because it doesn’t affect them. They aren’t affected by his attitudes toward blacks, Hispanics, gays, and Transgenders, so therefore they are indifferent. Whatever he does to our minorities will not matter, because it’s not their problem.

How can anyone justify Trump’s current actions and words, and refuse to forgive Hillary for her past mistakes and errors of judgment? To ignore Trump’s cases of sexual harassment/assault, rape, tax evasion, fraud, and his violent speech is to ignore the generations of suffering and discrimination America has been trying to surpass. This is racism, xenophobia, and sexism at its absolute worst.

This election has been a clear demonstration of the double standards women and men are held to. While Trump got away with bragging about violating women, Hillary was held responsible for the actions of her husband. Trump has no experience in politics, while Hillary has 30+ years of it culminating in her post as US Secretary of State, senator, first lady, and fighting for women and children’s rights.

This election marks a point in America’s history, a point where we need to define what America means to us. But we cannot do this when we refuse to acknowledge what is happening. We look at our history of slavery, and Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement, and we like to congratulate ourselves for making it to the age of post-racism. But we haven’t made as much progress as we think. Our first African American president has been succeeded by a man endorsed by the KKK. That tells you all you need to know about America’s progress.

The difference between the 1960s and this 21st century is that overt racial hostility is not what plagues America today so much as indifference and denial. Racial inequality remains a severe problem in our society, but it’s not changing because we pretend it’s not a problem. We are content in our complicity, and when there are those who are not, we are afraid of them. We condemn the individuals who voice dissent. When racial tension and police brutality in these past few years sparked a Black Lives Matter movement, many Americans called it corrupt and harmful.

The Black Lives Matter is a campaign to confront these racial inequalities by empowering minorities and raising awareness, yet we criticize it as only deepening the divide in America. So how do we unite America then? By sweeping these issues under the rug? Racial inequality and tensions will not change if we are too afraid to acknowledge them in the first place.

For all the people I’ve talked to who have disapproved of the Black Lives Matter movement, not one has proposed an alternative. Those who are quick to criticize this campaign fall silent when it comes to offering other solutions.

This selective silence, strangely enough, is found mainly in white Americans - in the demographic that voted for Trump.

Decades ago, in the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr. had addressed that very kind of selective silence in whites.

“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the black man’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the black man to wait for a “more convenient season.”

This was voiced decades ago, but it’s a truth that continues to be relevant. Why is it that we are afraid to speak for justice? I used to avoid talking about Black Lives Matter because I was afraid of arguing with people. I didn’t want to disagree. I wanted to appear like a neutral, reasonable person - I was afraid of supporting a movement that advocated racial equality, because I was afraid of being called a radical.

But it’s time to confront that fear. It’s time to talk about racial discrimination instead of denying it. It’s time to call people out on their denial. I will not accept opinions that invalidate another person’s existence. I will not respect a president whose entire platform was built on attacking blacks and Latinos and women and gays. I will not be told to tolerate an opinion that refuses to tolerate another person. The idea of tolerance has been twisted into an expectation of others to get along with those whose opinions disrespect their right to existence and their right to living in America. It’s an idea that dismisses the responsibility that comes with free speech.

What I am against is not having different opinions, but in the attitudes behind those opinions. There comes a point where you cannot accept prejudice and discrimination for the sake of “keeping the peace”.

We, as Americans, claim to advocate diversity, racial inequality, and acceptance, yet for all our words, our attitudes do not reveal that. Trump, despite his racism and misogyny, despite depicting our blacks and Latinos as criminals, our Muslims as terrorists, and our women as objects to be used and violated, has won. He is the man that America has chosen to vote into power. His ideals are the ones we have chosen to represent our country.

It doesn’t matter if Trump cannot do any of the illegal things he as promised. By winning the presidency, the platform he built on hate was validated. This changes culture. After the Brexit vote, Britain was no longer the same. Hate crimes increased, the economy plummeted, and people felt free to say all the ugliest things they’d ever thought because they knew at least half the country was behind them.

America’s got a serious problem, but it’s not in our economy. It is in our society. Fear and resentment fuels the divide in this country, and our denial and complicity prevents change.

We’ve collectively lost a part of our humanity in voting for the literal embodiment of ignorance, hate, and hypocrisy. When you are indifferent to our nation’s politics because it doesn’t affect you, that is selfishness. That is a lack of compassion and empathy, of not caring how other groups of people are terrified, how they are worried about their families being broken and deported, how they’re afraid of being seen in public with a Hijab.

Fear is warping this country, changing its values, transforming it into something monstrous. We must resist it, or else we lose perspective. We must be unafraid in confronting the ugly truths. Kindness, compassion, and equality are now the minority.

I’ll tell you what freedom is to me – no fear. America is supposed to stand for freedom, but I don’t recognize this America anymore.

To those who are devastated, angered, and saddened by the election: Please never stop fighting for a better world. This won’t be forever.