Choosing Hope After Trump's Election Is Easy... If You're White

For the left, the unthinkable has just happened. That thing we were joking about a year ago; the cartoonish idea (once illustrated in a famous TV cartoon series) has become a living, breathing, real-life reality. Donald Trump is the President-elect of the United States.

In the hours and days following Hillary Clinton's concession, half the world has had its say. Social media has become our modern venting system; millions upon millions of us standing on our microscopic soapboxes and bleating about what this event means to us (even and especially those of us who live thousands of miles from the nation that Trump is about to govern). So while it feels indelicate and anecdotal, looking at sites like Twitter and Facebook can give us a fairly good barometer of international public opinion.

Those first few hours saw the predictable contrast between desperate Clinton-supporters, tearing their clothes and shouting at the sky, and crowing Trump-backers telling their own echo-chambers that America is about to be Made Great Again. There have been a number of marches against and rallies for Trump, but mainly, people have expressed their political affiliations and strongly-worded emotional responses online.

Now, something interesting has started to happen. People in the political middle-ground, the centre-left area which includes most 'progressive' Christians, have started to change their tone from desolation to consolation. Articles have begun to appear on news sites which had decried Trump as a monster, essentially promoting the message that he might not be that bad after all. Trump's victory speech, which unexpectedly included a note of kindness towards Hillary, fuelled both. The narrative among many is already changing to one of 'choosing hope', and it feels awfully soon.

However, it seems to be that this trend is only really observable within a particular segment of the population. There's a whole other group who are still in deep mourning, still asking how this could possibly happen: how Obama could be followed by Trump. Their narrative is not about to switch to one of 'choosing hope' any time soon. And from what I can see, the difference between these two groups is simply the colour of their skin.

A caveat at this point. I make a point of rarely writing about race; there are many, many gifted writers of colour who are better and more authoritatively-placed to do so. We must listen to prophetic non-white voices such as Bryan Stevenson, C Walker-Barnes, Broderick Greer and Rozella White, and also here in the UK people like Chine McDonald and Krish Kandiah. I totally appreciate that as a white person, it's problematic that I am writing about, rather than to, non-white people.

However, it seems important to recognise that while many of us who are white are already talking about the difficult path of political reconciliation and somehow finding the strength to believe in a good President Trump, the black community remains in total despair. I believe white people (like me) have to realise our privilege at this point, stop, and ask if we're in danger of being compelled by a dangerously-alluring new story.

Do not mistake this as white guilt. Just a couple of days after the election, I see two very distinct groups emerging, and the worrying thing is that the group which is finding comfort in daring to trust the man they until-recently abhorred, also happens to be the group to which he offers least threat.

If you're black, you have just watched America's first black President replaced by a candidate who was backed by racists in America (no, not all Trump supporters are racist). You've seen a man who talked about building a wall to stop immigration from Central America; who polarised religious divides and defined a dream which captured the imaginations of millions of white men, elected to govern your nation. You've watched as the Black Lives Matter movement has arisen and somehow been forcibly contested. As a white person, I simply cannot understand how that feels (the same is absolutely true for women, who've just seen an alleged sex offender rewarded with the Presidency, but that's another point entirely).

So of course the black community is still in mourning. Of course the millions of legal immigrants in the USA who help to make up its rich diversity are still devastated, and desperately fearful about what the future holds. White people simply cannot ignore this; we can't just make grand and sweeping statements about how love and hope conquer all, even if we feel like our religious beliefs give us licence to do so. We have to remember what this moment means for non-white people who've just spent the last year asking the same "he couldn't, could he?" questions with a much greater investment of fear.

It is right to concede that Trump won a democratic election. It is also right to aim, long-term for an America, and an implicated Western World which is truly reconciled to itself; where the trajectory of equality and justice is re-established. We must not however mistake concession for reconciliation. If those of us who are white do that, we risk simply embracing the dysfunction of our race; jumping on to the lifeboat of our historic privilege when the progressive approach didn't work out.

All Christians must hold on at this time to Paul's famous words in Galatians 3:28, that "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus". We're all in this together, and the desperate concerns of the black community (and those felt by women) must, must also become the genuine concerns of whites – not least in the church. We have to look beyond our own experience and skin colour; past what this means for me (answer: it probably doesn't look so bad after all), and remain utterly committed to equal rights and treatment for all people. For the non-white communities, this doesn't currently look like the projected picture under a President Trump.

So while our Bible calls us clearly to glorious, unflinching hope, even in the darkest moments, let's not choose some cheap version of it which allows us to begin conveniently ignoring the desolation of others. Instead, it's time to "mourn with those who mourn," (Romans 12:15), for people of all colours and races to jointly recognise the potential challenges of a Trump presidency, and face them down together. Let's build bridges, both within the church and outside it, rather than retreating to all-too-literal ivory towers. Just imagine if this election birthed a new level of urgent racial unity, exactly at the moment when greater disunity was most likely. That would truly be an act of prophetic defiance, one that's within the church's power to inspire. Right now every church, and every Christian must ask: how can I make the divisions in my society smaller, even as they threaten to open wide?

Martin Saunders is a Contributing Editor for Christian Today and the Deputy CEO of Youthscape. Follow him on Twitter@martinsaunders.