For Minority And Women Elites, This Is An Utter Repudiation

America has spoken. And it has told all of us uppity minorities and women that we have no voice.

Trump FlagAmerica has spoken and it has pretty strongly told minorities and women to go f**k themselves. Ourselves. Our diversity. Our difference.

I have white friends who are sad, but are telling themselves that they’ll be okay. They are elite. They have good jobs and 21st century skills and a sense that the President-elect’s policies will be mostly focused on making it more difficult for women to challenge them in the workplace. As Chris Rock once said, they’re going to ride this white thing out a little bit longer.

I have minority friends who are sad, but are telling themselves that America was already arrayed against them and this will be no different. I mean, when you live in a world where the cops can shoot you and not go to jail, what difference does it make when Rudy Giuliani is up there saying “hells yeah,” as opposed to having Loretta Lynch around to say “oh no.”

But my minority friends are also elite. And we need to understand how precarious our position is. Because for us few and blessed minorities and women who have somehow risen to status and safety in a what is explicitly a white man’s world, this election is a repudiation of everything we’ve been told we are supposed to do. Professionally and socially, the election of President Trump is an open signal to our employers and colleagues that we do not have to be respected. We do not have to be acknowledged. We do not have to matter.

What are we going to do, sue? Hahaha. In Trumpworld, there isn’t a discrimination fact pattern available that employers have to fear. I just saw a man get elected president despite twelve women accusing him of sexual assault. I don’t think a white male boss is going to feel the least bit bad about hitting on an employee at this year’s holiday party.

Hostile work environment? Please. The President-elect just showed that basic civility is not a requirement for the highest office in the land. I don’t think microaggression training is something white men will take seriously now — not that they ever, ever did.

America just rejected merit. It just rejected preparedness. It just said, clearly, that if you are white and male and straight and wealthy then… the rules simply do not apply to you. You’d be a fool to think that such a stunning affirmation of white privilege will not filter down into your place of business.

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WHY WOULD ANYBODY PROMOTE YOU? Because you’ve “earned” it? It couldn’t matter less, America just said so. Why would anybody value you? Why would anybody value your difference? America just said it doesn’t need you — that it doesn’t even want you here. What incentive does a predominately white male partnership have to invite you in when the country itself has told them that you are not important?

I can hear people saying right now “not all white men.” Sure. You will have white male colleagues and white male employers who rejected Trumpism just as much as anybody. Not all of them will turn into bigots, overnight, just because Pennsylvania said they could.

But the thing about white privilege is that you can get through your whole fiscal quarter without thinking about how others might feel. You’ll share a lot of devastated looks with your white colleagues today, maybe even all week. But by Thanksgiving, it’ll be “business as usual,” for them at least.

For you, minority attorney gunning to make partner. For you, female analyst. For you, openly gay resident. Your professional futures now exist by their grace. Maybe they’ll still care, and maybe they won’t, but there’s not going to be anything you can do to force them to respect you. Not when the courts will soon be stacked against you. Not when the civil rights division is gutted. Not when the economy tanks and the very white people who just voted in our next recession come looking for someone to blame.

Maybe you thought that going to a good school, staying out of trouble, and landing a good job in the modern economy would protect you from the white people who we always knew were out there, just waiting for their chance to strike. Maybe you think that the minorities and women without educational opportunities or financial security are the ones who are going to catch hell.

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But the reality is that you live and work in a world where a white man — any white man — can do whatever he wants to you and be pretty sure that he’ll get away with it. He can grab you by the p*ssy, he can demand to see your papers. And nobody will be coming to stop him.

America has spoken. And it has told all of us uppity minorities and women that we have no voice.


Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. Unfortunately, Europe is probably just as racist as this country.