The Long Wait Is Over
My state let me down again, but the country as a whole came through. Women, people of color, indigenous people, LGBTQIA+ folks, and more made a Biden win possible. Now, we need to work toward a country where we all feel safe.
Our society is fractured. Angry white men are crying because their voices were overpowered by the voices of the oppressed. White nationalism cannot stand, friends. Fascism reared its ugly head in the United States of America, something we swore in 1945 would never happen on this planet again.
Fascism is growing in other countries, as well. Nationalism and pride in one's country isn't healthy when that pride is fueled by thinking one type of person is better than another. We are stronger together. We are better when we learn different viewpoints and see more than just one side through more than one lens.
White people have done a lot of damage to the Americas. We put indigenous people on reservations and stole their land. We stole Africans from their countries and shipped them to the new world in irons so they could harvest crops for us. I recognize the wrongs in my white past. I encourage you to do the same. I love Native American culture, but I won't appropriate it, or their stories, for my own fiction. I write black MCs for my best friend. I don't deny the heavy dose of white privilege mixed in. I write from a place of love, but it's also a place of bias. I'm going to improve as I go, write what I love, and encourage BIPOC authors to write and publish the kinds of stories I want to read: stories of other cultures, peoples, places, and times. Stories where love triumphs over fear.
I voted for love. There's still a ton of fear in my rural state, and the division between city and country, love and fear, hope and despair, is wider now than it's ever been. We're all in this together, and we need to work toward a better tomorrow.
That means reaching out to the Trumpers and mending relationships in the next four years. (I know. I hate the idea, too, but if we're not at the table, we're on the menu, and there's still a lot of hate at the congressional table.) We need to make a human connection so the next time we vote, we're not voting on life for some and death for others. We as a country need to decide that we all belong here and we all deserve a fair chance, even those folks forced onto reservations or brought here against their will. Those folks are the best of us. They're the ones who deserve a happy tomorrow the most, and if they're happy, we're all going to be happy.
That's the country, the world, I want to live in. If we judge success by the success of our most marginalized people, that's how we all win this human race.
