Anti-Muslim Backlash

Amina Ismail, left, Fatima Amaziane, center, and Dalia Abdallah hold signs during a news conference in the Queens borough of New York, Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015. The news conference was called to express opposition to hate crimes and rhetoric, particularly in light of a recent attack in the neighborhood that police are investigating as a hate crime. Advocacy groups believe there has been a spike in anti-Muslim incidents across the United States in recent weeks that can be linked to last week's mass shooting in California and the inflammatory rhetoric of Donald Trump and other Republican presidential candidates. And they say that Muslims are fearful the backlash could lead to further harassment and violence.

(AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Tara M. Gonsalves is studying for her doctorate in sociology at the University of California at Berkeley

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA -- I grew up in Solon, a town I remember as solidly middle-class and mostly white with a sprinkling of black families and immigrant families like mine.

We lived next door to an elderly black couple, across the street from a bunch of kids from my school, and down the block from my sister's best friend. Growing up in this town as a young South Asian girl was hard in some ways - I heard racist and xenophobic comments sometimes - and wonderful in others: We lived near kind and generous neighbors. Most of the time, we looked out for each other.

There were some things that that we could not help each other with. I remember the day that one of our neighbors lost his job. In my neighborhood, several friends' fathers lost jobs (most of my friends had moms at home). There was a constant anxiety about job security that filtered into the conversations of me and my friends, young as we were.

We did not understand what was happening in the national or global economy - all we knew was that someone had fired another dad, seemingly for no reason. We did not know what we were experiencing was part of a larger economic trend across Midwestern cities.

Manufacturing jobs were leaving our city and "moving" overseas. All we saw were the tired looks on parents' faces and the financial anxiety that was palpable around dinner tables and trips to the grocery store.

What so many people have been talking about on the macro level, we experienced in the local spaces of our neighborhoods and in our homes.

Though it has been 16 years since I left Ohio, it remains my childhood home. I come back to see my parents, friends and teachers and I think of it often. As I watched the election results come in last week, I could not help but wonder about my neighbors, teachers and friends and who they had voted for.

I know some people I grew up with, who taught me, voted for Donald Trump. Trump promises an answer to economic frustration and job insecurity.

Regardless of the efficacy of Trump's economic vision (I think it will actually make the job situation in Ohio worse), I am thinking about the kind of culture that Trump has made more visible, given voice to, and lifted up: The Culture of Trump.

The Culture of Trump is, in many ways, scarier than his proposed policies. The Culture of Trump looks for people to blame for job precariousness and general feelings of vulnerability from a violent world.

Jobs have left. The U.S. government has been at war for years. While Bernie Sanders encouraged us to demand accountability from a government that enabled the multibillionaires and multimillionaires to become richer while others have become poorer, Trump encourages us to blame undocumented people, Muslims, immigrants, and even women.

In one-on-one conversations, glares or prolonged stares on the sidewalk, exclusion and attacks on playgrounds, to outright physical attacks, I know from personal experience that these groups have experienced discrimination for a long time.

But, the Culture of Trump empowers and emboldens this kind of hateful behavior. Stories have already emerged of people attacking Muslim women, telling them that their days of feeling safe to wear a hijab are numbered.

I do not know whether voting for Hillary Clinton would have given us all the answers, but I do know that the Culture of Trump makes me scared for little girls and immigrant children growing up in towns in Ohio. I hope that people like the ones I grew up with - middle class and mostly white people in small towns and cities - look out for their Muslim and immigrant neighbors: they are the last defense against fear and hatred. Now, more than ever, we have to hold ourselves and each other accountable for the spread of the Culture of Trump.

Tara M. Gonsalves is studying for her doctorate in sociology at the University of California at Berkeley.

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