Anne Godlasky

USA TODAY

More than 200 hate incidents — ranging from swastika graffiti to physical threats — have been reported across the country since Donald Trump's election, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit that monitors hate groups in the USA.

Now many people of color, women and LGBT people who have long faced threats large and small must grapple with the knowledge that half of their fellow Americans who voted elected someone who has talked about keeping Muslims and immigrants out of the country, using police tactics considered racially biased such as stop-and-frisk, and grabbing women without consent.

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They are part of the other half of Americans who voted, many of whom wept on election night and since, crying not because their horse in the race lost but because they fear for their safety and well-being.

"I think it's normal in any election, one side is going to demonize the other," says Monnica Williams, a licensed clinical psychologist.

"In this case, Trump actually said those awful things about women, about minorities, and he stands by those remarks," Williams says. "It's very scary for people who are part of marginalized and stigmatized communities."

And yet, many people who are upset have been told, even by Trump opponents, to calm down — that it was just an election and that America would continue as it always has.

"To say that this was just another election is blindly ignorant to just how ... viscerally this campaign ripped open the wounds of racial resentment in this country," says Ryan Lenz, a Southern Poverty Law Center spokesperson. "And if it's not apparent to you now, I believe it soon will be."

Indeed, for many people who aren't straight, white American males, these latest hate incidents come on top of a year that was already terrifying and degrading.

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• Five months ago to the day, 49 people were gunned down at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. It was the deadliest attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.

• A week before that, the Stanford sexual assault survivor highlighted the disregard many rape victims endure after her attacker, Brock Turner, received a six-month sentence. (He served just three months.)

• A month later, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were shot and killed by police in separate incidents within a day of one another.

Pulse, Stanford, Sterling and Castile weren't isolated incidents:

• This year, 385 black, Hispanic and Native American people have been shot and killed by police, according to The Guardian.

• Every two minutes, an American is sexually assaulted, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

• More than 1,114 people were victims of hate crimes because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, according the FBI's 2014 data.

The outbreak of post-election violence aimed at minority groups is "not that surprising" given the language heard and violence seen at Trump rallies, Lenz says.

"Over the course of his campaign, Donald Trump has blown a dog whistle at a number of far-right ideologies from anti-Muslim extremists to flat-out neo-Nazis," says Lenz. "With his election, many racists feel they've been legitimized."

Some Trump supporters — former KKK grand wizard David Duke or students who chanted "build the wall," for instance — openly praised this rhetoric.

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But many Trump voters looked past his words, rather than condoned them. Exit polls in Wisconsin, a big win for Trump, show that 21% of voters who had a negative opinion of him voted for him anyway.

"I don't want to give the impression that everyone who voted for Trump is a racist," says Williams, who pointed to economic issues, abortion and problems with Hillary Clinton as other reasons for Trump's victory. "That being said, I think there were a number of people who were racist who said, 'it's about time someone is saying these things.'"

Trump’s campaign, however, has objected to the idea that he has encouraged racism.

“We totally disavow hateful rhetoric,” spokeswoman Hope Hicks has said. “Online or otherwise.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has called on Trump to "distance himself" from "extremists."

"This violence that is starting to boil over is a reminder of how much work we have to do now to bridge the cultural gaps that are apparent in this country," Lenz says. "This election does not legitimize racial hatred."