Over the past year, I have been extremely worried about the bodily safety of a whole range of people in American society. Muslim and immigrant people who are threatened with deportation and hate crimes, poor women who have decreasing access to safe abortion, disabled people whose continued access to life itself is made even more precarious each time our already inadequate health system is threatened, and transgender women of color who face devastating levels of violence from strangers, intimate partners, and the state alike: All of these bodies are put at risk by rising xenophobia. So, too, are the bodies of Black and Chicano people at the hands of police, queer people who have decreasing civil rights protections, and transgender students and workers who want to be left in peace.
But what about the anguish this causes our minds? It’s not just our bodies that are under assault — it’s our minds that are being attacked, as well. As the white male rage of the nation is emboldened by the White-Identity-Extremist-in-Chief in the White House, the toll on everyone else’s mental health grows. When the president said last summer that there were “some very fine people” about people attending a white supremacist rally where a woman was murdered, it made nonwhite people feel so much less safe. So, too, did his saying that immigrants from El Salvador, Haiti, and the entire African continent hail from “shithole countries,” a comment that causes people who come from those countries — and people who look like them — to feel distress. Read more via them.