Chinese-American journalist Wilfred Chan was in harm’s way in the East and the West in the same week. On Sunday, he covered a demonstration and took a picture of the Hong Kong Police riot squad coming his way. On Wednesday, he showed an election map that showed what would have happened if only people of color (non-white) Americans had voted. Democrats would have won in all states. His message was: “White folks, sincerely, you have work to do.”

Two days later, Chan revealed the hate messages he’s received. He’s been called “Mr. Chinaman” and his personal favorite is “Wonton”. Someone wrote that he and other people of color will be deported from the United States or would be killed. Why? Because the US is a “white country”.

There are two competing views on the unexpected defeat of Democratic Party. Both views agree that the majority of white voters chose Donald Trump and fewer non-white Americans voted for Hillary Clinton compared to how they voted for Obama in 2012. The first view argues that inequality and economic concerns among the white working class prompted them to vote for the populist Trump, since Clinton was out of touch with the masses. The second view claims that millions of Americans voted Trump because they support his racism and sexism.

The first view is more popular among economic and political pundits and can also be related to in an Indonesian context. Supporters of this first view do not support Trump, but they blame the modern world economy for driving the working class to frustration and anger, thus making them vulnerable to Trump’s message. In the Indonesian context, this mean that a capable candidate can lose to an incompetent opponent who is more adept at capturing the anger and the raw emotion of the poor. The solution is for the capable candidates to listen to the commoners and adopt pro-poor measures. Therefore, this theory is popular among socialists and Marxists in the US and elsewhere.

The second view is less popular among pundits and the media not because its argument is weak, but because racism and sexism are supposedly “sensitive” topics that cannot be discussed in polite company. Critics of this view say that the 60 million Americans who voted Trump cannot all be racist and sexist. After all, more than half of them are women. After all, so many white Americans voted for Obama in 2012.

The ongoing racist threats made across America, however, show that economic hardship might have less to do with the ascent of Trump. Groups of white boys and men have been screaming at Asians on the street. White women have been yelling at Latina and Muslim women on the trains and in supermarkets. Graffiti with swastika have been painted throughout dozens of universities and schools. Similar reactions happened following the Brexit vote in Britain, where many white Britons believed migrants and nonwhite Britons would be deported.

White people, of course, are not the poorest group in America or Britain. So many migrants live in harsher conditions than they do, especially Caribbean migrants in both places. Black women, the most economically vulnerable group, voted overwhelmingly for Clinton. Other minority races also voted for Clinton, no matter their economic situation. Of course, we could also say that the whites voted for Trump, no matter what their economic conditions. The only exception is college-educated women.

Many white women voted for Trump not because they were concerned about their income, but because they are the “Ivanka voters”. Their vote was for Ivanka instead of Donald. They love her style and success story. Many see themselves as non-political people and dislike Donald’s gross sexism. So why did they still vote for him? They prefer to see Ivanka in the White House over Hillary (or Chelsea), since Ivanka has no relation to Barack Obama, whom they dislike.

Replace Hillary Clinton with Elizabeth Warren and the result would have been the same. Many Democrats insist that Bernie Sanders should have been the Democratic candidate and their insistence highlights sexism among left-wing men, as well as racism. Sanders was even less popular among non-white Democrats during the primary, since by concentrating on class, he ignored the concerns of African-Americans. Now many of his male supporters, dubbed “brocialists” or “brogressives”, dismiss the parlance of young feminists and tell black commentators that the white working class is the most important group to reach.

In 2016, white Americans and white Britons have selfishly turned the world into a dystopia. What were you thinking? While speaking of inequality, you were listening and supporting rich men with immigrant wives — the winners of this inequality. You feel sorry for the folks in the rust belt, but you do not feel pity for your even poorer neighbors. You are afraid of the Islamic State (IS) movement, yet you shrug off mass shootings committed by white boys. Your grandfather fought the Nazis, yet you are liking Nazi messages on your Facebook pages.

It’s not about what’s good for white working class is good for the rest. What’s good for working class Americans is good for white people.

If you are offended by my words, good. I am very offended by the way our world has been ruined. If Britain stayed in the European Union and if Hillary Clinton was the presidentelect, then we would be able to figure out how to control the extreme weather, how to keep the South China Sea secure and open and how to complete the 2010s as the safest decade to date in history.

Instead, just because you are afraid of Muslims and black people, just because you are angry that the first black president of US is one of the greatest, just because you don’t want to be led by a non-conservative woman, you have set back the progress of world history for years and brought back the horror of the 1930s. French and Germans, now the world counts of you. Indonesia saved itself from self-destruction in 2014. Now it is your turn.

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