Let the other groups denigrated and threatened by Trump speak for themselves. The women, immigrants, Muslims, Jews, the LGBT community and others who now must walk through the streets of their country for the next four years in shame and fear, knowing that their value as human beings has been diminished by their neighbors. I only speak for myself as an African American and I speak with the rage of betrayal.

After numerous police shootings of unarmed blacks every year, national Black Lives Matter protests, and unprecedented expressions of support from pro athletes, black Americans saw a glimmer of hope that white Americans were finally acknowledging the overwhelming evidence of institutional racism that had been glaringly obvious to blacks for many years. But that hope was misplaced. Instead, a majority of white America chose to swallow the blue pill, preferring to, as Morpheus explains in “The Matrix,” “wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.”…

How can we hope that this man understands or cares about us? Especially now that white America has rewarded his outrageous racism, misogyny, xenophobia and religious intolerance with a mandate to put those beliefs into policy. For African Americans, America just got a little more threatening, a little more claustrophobic, a lot less hopeful. We feel like disposable extras, the nameless bodies who are never part of the main cast.