Who's Fault is Racism?

     The only way I can imagine that you haven't heard that Donald Trump is the new U.S. president is if you've been living under a literal rock. There's so much I would like to talk about in regards to the election outcome, but first I want to address the recent news stories about racism and hate crimes that are seemingly popping up EVERYWHERE. Here are the top news stories about the subject on Google.

     There are a countless number of articles about the racism and hate crimes floating around social media including this popular one titled "Day 1 in Trump's America" that highlights some incidents that have happened since Trump won the election 2 days ago. Most happen on college campuses and involve some sort of graffiti or someone forcefully removing another person's hijab.

     Individual stories like the one below have also been shared all over social media.

Conversation

     I want to start out this conversation by saying that I don't like Donald Trump at all and I did not vote for him. I personally don't think that who people vote for determines much about them, but I wanted to confirm that I didn't vote for Trump so that you can understand my opinion about this entire situation without thinking that I'm biased.

     There are two reasons all of these stories of discrimination are bothering me and the first is that WE as ordinary people are using social media to help these people justify discriminatory and hateful acts since the election. The hundreds of thousands of Facebook statuses and Tweets in which people are talking about how everything changed in our country overnight and how the morals and values this country used to have aren't there anymore are fueling people to commit hate and race related crimes. People can read this stuff and think "Yeah, you're right, our country has changed overnight! I can commit hate crimes now!" Posting stuff on Facebook about how our country just became racist is a self-fulfilling prophecy if I've ever seen one. It's almost like we are saying to all of the hateful people in our country that we expect them to commit all these crimes now that we elected a new president, and that if they do commit crimes, we're going to blame the president instead of them.

      The second reason these stories are bothering me is because the people involved and these millions of other people sharing them are all using Trump to justify what's happening. In the instance in which a woman gets her hijab forcefully removed and is threatened for wearing one in the first place, Trump is not the criminal. The other WOMAN who initiated such a hateful act is the ONLY one responsible. There is no doubt in my own mind that Donald Trump is racist. But that doesn't mean that he has changed an laws or policies on racism or hate crimes (He couldn't even if he tried) So the fact that people are crediting all of this individual racism to Trump being elected just blows my mind. We didn't loose the personal choice of being hateful or not just because we got a new president. Unless Trump makes discrimination and hate crimes legal or somehow used telekinesis to get you to commit a hate crime, then YOU are the ONLY one responsible for that hate crime. Not Trump and certainly not his supporters.

Think about it this way. If we elected a president who is Catholic, does that mean everyone of a different religion should feel threatened? Does that mean that all hate crimes committed by Catholics should be attributed to him? It just doesn't make any sense. We all have our own voices and all of our rights still. We choose whether or not we want to be hateful. So maybe instead of directly blaming Trump for all of the hate, we start blaming the perpetrators of the recent hate who are our friends, our acquaintances, people we know. Let's all educate and support each other so we can continue to strive for an equal country as people, even if our president disagrees. I promise it's possible.

What do you think about these recent hate-crimes? Do you think they're all justified because of our new racist president? Do you even believe that Trump is racist or that some of us have reason to fear for our lives? Leave a comment below!