I have been battling depression and sleeplessness while thinking about how to fight Donald Trump and what his rise means about the United States of America.

It is dispiriting that after both modest and substantial gains have been made during the Obama and Black Lives Matter years (on race, gender, political imagination, LGBT rights and healthcare) many stand to be rolled back with a vengeance in the coming months and years. The retrenchment is frightening. And it’s become clear that this fight is going to last for the rest of my life.

For advice on how to deal with this, I turned to my late father, Bill Thrasher. He was an air force sergeant who went to night school as an adult to become a high school and community college teacher of US and “Afro American” history.

My dad died suddenly, in 2003, while teaching a class full of students; a blood clot killed him instantly while he was lecturing about the civil war and the reconstruction. His sudden death broke my heart, but he left me with a road map: the example of a civil rights life well lived, a binder of newspaper clippings from a column he wrote in our local newspaper, and a single audio recording of a monthly radio show in Ventura, California, he hosted called Minority Perspective.

That sole episode I have was broadcast on 7 December 1986. It was Pearl Harbor day, and the height of Reagan’s Iran-Contra affair. In it, Dad laments his sadness after the previous month’s election, when California voters re-elected a deeply conservative governor.

Here’s a passage which gave me life after Trump was elected:

Conservatism, by its nature, is racism. It’s racism only because conservatism simply means to conserve, to preserve the status quo. And the status quo with respect to minorities, is: “Stay in your place! Remain the same, exactly where you’re at. Be the victims of discrimination! Do not protest. Let the laws stand as they are. Do not enact laws that will try to redress grievances.” So when the county of Ventura, the state of California, and the United States of America votes to support conservative candidates who represent those viewpoints, it is saying to us, the minorities: “It’s gone too far! You must stay in your place. There will be no more change. You must continue wherever you are at. You will always be on the low end of the pole economically and politically.” And that is why it is so difficult for Afro Americans to accept the conservatives, no matter who they happen to be, whether they are in the Republican party or the Democratic party. Because conservatism, by its very nature, is racist! It’s anti-black. It’s anti-Mexican American. It’s anti-female. It’s anti-Native American. It’s anti-Japanese American. It’s anti-anything that isn’t white, Anglo Saxon, Protestant male. Because that group wants to preserve what it has illegally gained and wishes to continue – in politics, and in economics. And it will use the political institution to keep their gains, even though they weren’t gained honestly or legally. That’s my objection to conservatism. Conservatism will prevent my children and my grandchildren from fulfilling their destiny as Americans. My children and my grandchildren, as well as I am, as well my father and my grandfather and my great-grandfather, were second-class citizens and are second-class citizens, and conservatism wants to keep us as second-class citizens. I am not going to accept that! I will spend all of my energies fighting that type of thought, and I urge all minorities – not just Afro Americans, but all minorities – to resist this. We have to do whatever we can, everywhere, wherever we’re at, in whatever capacity we’re in, to keep the issue alive – to keep pushing, to keep probing, to keep challenging, until we have forged our way into the economic and political system, where we have a control our of destiny, and not have to leave it in control of people who are antagonistic toward us, who hate us, who do not want to see us have a share in the American dream.



Listening to my father fighting Reaganism, 30 years ago next week, is both depressing and freeing as I think about fighting Trumpism. I feel depressed that the same issues he fought remain so present some three decades later – issues that won’t be solved in my lifetime. But I also feel less alone in knowing that I am connected to him – and to my ancestors and nieces and nephews – in an intergenerational struggle for a better America. Even if the fight doesn’t end with me, I hope to ease the path for those who follow, or at least give the comfort that my father’s words lend me today.

Trump and his ilk will try to say “stay in your place” to all of us who aren’t conservative white men; accommodationist white liberals will do so, as well.

Fortunately, I know where (and who) I come from, and I can listen to my dad pushing back on Reaganism to guide me when I feel lost in Trumpland.

If you, too, are feeling down about the fight ahead, don’t be afraid to ask your elders for guidance. They might just show the way towards the well-trod road just when you need it most.

