photo by Karen Ducey for Getty Images

It would be crazy, almost irresponsible for me to have a blog called ‘N A Perfect World, be a young woman of color in America and not talk about this election. Via text, phone calls, at my local watering holes I feel like I’ve spoken about it ad nauseam with friends and family. All with a sense of doom and gloom. Yesterday, in NYC it was grey and rainy. There was definitely a depression, a deflation if you will in the streets. We were emotionally exhausted. At a time when we need to come together, the divide in the US feels greater than ever, and that divide, while not created by this election was opened, picked and prodded at. So now we have a President-elect who has openly displayed acts of bigotry and misogyny, who is supported by the KKK and is simply a grade-A asshole. Great reality TV-star, but a great President? The leader of the free world? I would definitely trust Kim and Kanye more with nuclear codes than him. I have to have faith that my fellow Americans in those rust-belt states, in Florida, in states that 4, 8 years ago Obama killed it, that their votes were not votes of hate. Were not simply disgruntled votes because it wasn’t a Bernie, or Biden or even Elizabeth Warren. I was in the UK during Brexit, spoke to my friends there — who are mostly Londoners — and like me, they live in a cosmopolitan bubble. I was reading a New York Times piece and it’s one of the few things I’ve read that has given me hope or at least general understanding of some of my fellow Americans as not ignorant monsters but people that are frustrated with the status quo and being ignored by the government. Maybe they wanted something different just like I did 8 years ago. I would say this isn’t the best way to go about it, but…

Mr. Trump’s election and Brexit together underscore a central facet of these times. The old ideological divisions of left and right have effectively been eclipsed by a new economic taxonomy — those who have benefited from globalization and those who have not.

“In Britain, affluent communities of professionals who hire Romanians to clean their homes and who enjoy getaways to Spain overwhelmingly voted to stay in the European Union. Industrial communities that have lost jobs as manufacturing has shifted east — to Eastern Europe, Turkey and Asia — generally voted to leave.

In the United States, college-educated urbanites making a comfortable living in the quintessential trades of globalization — finance, technology and media — disdained Mr. Trump. People in the center of the country who lack degrees and have seen jobs transferred to China and Mexico played a leading role in delivering the White House to Mr. Trump.

In northeastern England (something like the Rust Belt of Britain) people who voted to leave Europe speak openly about doing so to punish those who beseeched them to vote to stay — people like the exceedingly unpopular former prime minister David Cameron. The situation is so depressed, it cannot get worse, the logic runs. Any economic pain will fall on wealthy Londoners, people say.”

Peter S. Goodman for the New York Times

I’m happy I got to go to the White House, and work with the first lady during a time in our country that was filled with hope, desire for change and a voice for the next generation. A first family that exuded class and inclusivity. Obama sited a hope for a difference between a campaign Donald Trump and a governing Donald Trump, and quite honestly, not that worried about him, but the hate that his campaign has normalized in pockets of this country. To my friends with a like-mind, now isn’t a time to run, inspired by people like my friend Rory, my friend Sophie, I’ve never been a runner. Now more than ever it’s our duty to make sure the nation doesn’t go to sh*ts. An actual wall? A friend of mine on Facebook actually asked people that he knew that were Trump supporters to explain “why?” I’d like to open that forum here. In the meantime, I’ll be researching all the necessary prep to protect myself as a young women before January 20th.

And as for Calexit? California don’t leave… your avocados are just so delicious.