The white working-class and middle-class minorities

I remember turning off the TV and hoping that when I woke up the results of the 2016 election would somehow be different. I remember the weather reflecting the mood of New York City the next day - grey, cold, hopeless. I remember crying with my co-workers, wondering how we were going to face our kids, all low-income minorities, later that day.

I remember realizing that no matter what atrocities this administration committed, due to some of my privileges, I likely would not be affected.

When I read defenses of poor, rural white folks - be it a New York Times think piece, portions of Bernie Sanders' campaign speeches, or in this case, Professor Pruitt's keynote address to Toledo College - some form of inner turmoil takes place. Professor Pruitt used the tweets of progressives to demonstrate the type of disparaging remarks that liberals launched toward white working class voters before and after the 2016 election. And while these people may vote Republican, there is no question that the current GOP absolutely does not have their best interests in mind. It probably isn't fair to call them all anti-intellectual or racist. But it is hard to cut them some slack when their racism is (indirectly) pointed at me.

My grandparents are all Mexican immigrants who came to the United States under the braceros program. Through a mixture of my parents' hard work and my own luck, I grew up in a middle-class, predominantly white suburb. I had a more than adequate public school education and access to the types of activities that looked good to the elite private college I was eventually accepted to. My citizenship, middle-class status, ability, and education are all privileges that have made my life easier. They also shield me from the current racist, sexist government that I have some reason to fear, because through all of my privilege, I am still a Mexican woman.

In high school and college, I had a lot of white friends. They were not all well off (though in college, most were), so growing up, I knew that even as a Mexican woman, I had advantages that some white people did not. For a while, I cut most white people some slack. I knew they had problems too; I didn't even hate Hillbilly Elegy quite as much as some of my liberal counterparts. But then white people chose Donald Trump - a man who started his campaign by calling Mexicans racists and murderers, and who continues to vilify Latinx immigrants with his "Angel families" and mad insistence on a border wall. Over 50% of white people watched him campaign on these things, and then thought, this is fine, he can represent me and my interests. I still have white friends. I still know they have their own problems, and that not all of them are racists. But I don't know what to do when I am asked to cut the white, rich and poor alike, people who have done some, at the very least implicitly, racist stuff like voting for Donald Trump, slack.

But I wonder if helping white, rural folks see the light and forgiving their sins is my job? On the one hand, I am part of the audience that the above pieces are trying to reach. I am liberal, a member of the chattering class, and just so mad at them. These pieces are intended to promote understanding and reconciliation between subsets of the country that are fundamentally misunderstanding each other lately. I feel for the rural white women that are facing less job security, and more intimate partner violence, in theory. But, this may be the one time that learning more about a person's thought process and life story does not bring out my typical empathy. Tracie St. Martin has problems too, but she leaned toward voting for a man who hates my beloved grandparents for their crime of wanting a chance at a better life. Racial bias may not be the reason she grew to dislike Obama, or is willfully deaf to Trump's clear distaste for anyone with brown skin, but I cannot disentangle it. And every time I try to, I see the face of my Alita who passed away last year, whom would likely have never been given the opportunity to tell the United States media about her concerns, and how current policies hurt her. I have the duty to speak for her and people like her, because my life experience and education have granted me the ability to do so in a way that is palatable to white folks.

As middle class minorities, another subset of which people either forget about, or to be honest, assume is comprised of mostly Asians, there is no one right way to handle the situation. We can, and should be, forgiven for not enthusiastically taking every opportunity to educate white people, nor trying to understand them. For one, they might not really listen or care, and also, it is just plain exhausting. But we also may be in a better position to explain why the things Trump has been saying are so harmful. Either, I would argue is a valid course depending one's personal circumstances, as well as the context and person. As for me, I will work harder on being understanding, but will keep women of color at the forefront of my mind.