I’m Muslim, but My Roommate Supports Trump

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/opinion/im-muslim-but-my-roommate-supports-trump.html

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When she outed herself to me as a Trump supporter, I realized I had finally found the “silent majority.” I looked at her, this suddenly strange girl who sleeps a few feet away from me, my college roommate. The silent majority has seen me put on my head scarf in the morning and take it off at night. The silent majority has touched my face, done my makeup, watches “Gilmore Girls” religiously. The silent majority occasionally enjoys sliced mango before bed.

We fought; I packed. This was Tuesday evening, so I headed to my friend’s dorm, where a small group of us, mainly black women, tried to find solace in one another as the country slowly fell to red. I tried and failed to speak, to write. I ignored my roommate’s lengthy texts.

Did she really expect me to respect her choice when her choice undermined my presence in this country, in this university, in my very own dorm room? Did she really expect me to shake her hand for supporting a candidate who would love to bar my relatives from this country, who has considered making people of my faith register in a specific database and carry special ID, Holocaust-style?

What with the standstill of loyalties in this election, it is no surprise that our argument proved hopeless. There was no reasoning with her, but my goal today is not to reason with her. I know perfectly well — by the nature of this very platform, by the type of person who would click on this article — that I am preaching to the choir.

My roommate’s reasoning reflected an “us versus them” mind-set that has defined this nation for as long as it has existed, that explains the very core of Donald J. Trump’s appeal. Mr. Trump’s canned last-minute appeals to “one united people” does not change the fact that the world feels very different to me today.

I’ve always found refuge and clarity in the streets of New York City. After the vote was all but called at 3 in the morning, I wandered around Times Square with two equally bewildered friends. Drifting through the empty blue streets, witnessing the ugly truth illuminated by billboards, was more surreal than I could have imagined. The emboldened silent majority speckled the streets, sporting their red “Make America Great Again” caps. I was struck by a feeling that their caps were a military uniform, that our country was at civil war, and that I was a target. The way we eyed one another warily seemed to confirm this sentiment. And in fact, this exact dynamic seems to be playing out on college campuses around the country.

During a job interview recently, I was asked about the audience that I write for. I responded instantly: people who do not look like me. People I can shock with my multifaceted existence — the fact that I am Muslim and an ardent feminist, a child of immigrants and a writer in English. People — mainly white people — whom I can persuade to see reason by sharing parts of myself through stories that make me as real to them as they are to themselves.

On the subway back from Times Square, I realized that I was seeing the election results as proof of my personal failure as a writer. A black friend who was with me saw the election results as proof of her personal failure as a Black Lives Matter activist. A white friend seemed to blame his choice to vote in New York rather than back home in Michigan. Everyone I was with seemed crippled by a collective lack of agency that was more difficult to watch than CNN’s election coverage.

But this is not our fault. We are not the silent majority.

My roommate’s main defense of Mr. Trump during our argument was that he didn’t mean the “stupid things” he said. She had the privilege to dismiss his words, just as he has the privilege to dismiss mine. But today, I have woken up with a craving to write. Today, for the first time in a long time, my audience has changed.

Now that an us-versus-them system has been voted into office, I want to write for those who feel like the latter, the “them.” National unity in this moment may be nonexistent, but the unity among us is real and crucial. To the first trans kid I ever met; to my Muslim and Hispanic and female friends; to my sister and my mother, both hijabis; to all of the individuals who helped me feel love on Tuesday night, who offered me water as I cried on their bathroom floors, who marched from Union Square to Trump Tower on Wednesday — I believe in us, in our ability to regroup and find a course of action.

Mobilization depends on all of us — everyone who has been or could be a target of Mr. Trump, everyone who has been appalled by this election, at the parody of American democracy that has unfolded. We do not need to be silent. We do need to find resilience, inspiration and hope in one another.