The Daily Gamecock

Column: Dear young liberals

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Dear young liberals,

Many of us are not used to losing. That’s probably why waking up on Nov. 9 felt so different from waking up on Nov. 8, although we were living in the exact same country as we were before. We’ve grown up under two terms of Obama — two massive wins in 2008 and 2012. And although progress has been stifled by rabid partisanship and government gridlock, victories have been won over the course of our lifetimes — LGBT rights, environmental reform, increased government transparency, healthcare reform, the expansion of a civil rights division in Department of Justice and so on. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless. The country was taking strides forward.

But what many white liberals, like me, learned as the results came in was what minorities in this country have known for a long time: We weren’t taking strides forward so much as we were straining against the pull of a rubber band. On Election Day, the band snapped back. Progress isn’t permanent. For me, that was a crushing realization to have, but for my friends who are people of color, it was less surprising.

We still have abortion rights because activists and organizations like Planned Parenthood have been fighting to keep restrictive laws from getting passed. We have the voting rights we do because activists have been attacking suppression laws in the courts whenever they emerge. Gay rights are where they are because gay people sued and sued to overturn discriminatory laws, and they’re still suing. Civil rights advances have always come at the expense of great time and great effort by marginalized groups, after years of crushing injustice. And it’s always momentous when reform gets passed into law, but most of the fight happens in making sure we don’t slide backward. It is unlikely that we’ll make any real progress in the next four years, but the fight to keep from regressing will continue.

Donald Trump will be president. Whether or not the Electoral College is unfair and should be eliminated, he played by the rules of the game and won. But he won’t be president until Jan. 20, which means we have time to learn from this election and get ready.

Here’s what I learned from 2016: I’ve been slacking. A lot of us have been. Yes, there have been some white people beating the streets fighting for racial minority rights. Yes, some people who are not mentally ill or disabled have been fighting for people who are mentally ill or disabled. Yes, some straight people have been fighting for LGBT people and some Christians have been fighting for Muslims and Jews. Some men have been fighting for women’s rights. Those contributions are amazing. But part of losing this election is being honest with ourselves about what we’ve done wrong, and while everything I’ve just said is true, what is equally true is this: A lot of us haven’t.

That’s hard to admit. But I’ve told myself that I didn’t donate to things I believe in because I didn’t have the money, while people with less money than I have have donated to the causes I passed over. I have been to some protests. I have volunteered. But not often. I told myself I didn’t have time to do more, but that wasn’t really true — I just didn’t want to spend my free time holding a sign or pushing a cause when I could be relaxing.

I voted and I sign petitions — incredibly low-effort civic participation. I write for this paper, but if I didn’t love it I probably wouldn’t have started, or continued. I could have been doing more, but I didn’t, because I didn’t have to. My drinking water was never in danger. I was never going to be shot in the street by the police. I was not ever and am not now in danger of being registered for my religion, or losing my job and falling behind on my rent because I am being held in jail on a minor charge that I cannot afford to pay bail for.

This should be sounding familiar to a lot of you. Because I am not alone. Only 13 percent of people participate in politics to the extent I do or more — the remaining 87 percent do less. And 37 percent do nothing at all. Yes, you could blame that on the older generation, or Trump voters not caring about the preservation of democracy, or the fact that millennials don’t have the money or the time to participate. But that would be a disingenuous shifting of blame. Older people participate more. Trump voters voted, or we wouldn’t be here. They went to rallies. They worked for his campaign.

Additionally, some of us — like I was — are lying to ourselves about not having the time or the money. Many of us are actually living paycheck to paycheck, deeply in debt, and cannot be expected to contribute to causes. But some of us are not. Some of us are overloaded with class, homework, jobs and so on, and genuinely don’t have the time to participate. But some of us are not. And that balance tips towards white people, because our families, on average, are richer, and we tend to get more scholarships.

Liberals — particularly white liberals, straight liberals, male liberals — are going to have to start putting our money where our mouths are. I could have been doing more. So could many of the people reading this. But marginalized people did not have the luxury not to care, and that is even more true now. And if you say you care about civil rights, you need to stand up for them. It’s all well and good to say that our new government will enact discriminatory policies —what are liberals who will not be hurt by them going to do about it?

A lot of us who have not felt the urgency of discrimination have been talking the talk without walking the walk. That was always unacceptable, but it's even less acceptable now. If Trump’s presidency’s effects are to be mitigated, our activism has to be active rather than performative.

So don’t just put on a safety pin and complain for the next four years — get out there and fight.


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