This post was originally published on this site.
I have never truly feared the antipathy of those who disdain me, but like a gut punch from Muhammad Ali, I am dishearteningly afraid of the silence of my friends.
One of Mama’s signature statements, often made to me when she was frustrated because I had taken a personal risk too big for her comfort: “I have never known you to be properly afraid of anything.” I could have said the same thing to her, but meant it as a compliment when she sometimes meant it as an admonition of motherly love.
Well, Mama, if only you were still here, you would witness my genuine and profoundly sad fear for the first time because I am not at all sure who will stand with me anymore.
I was not afraid when many of my countrymen and women disagreed with me, when they exercised their right to exclude me from their religions, because I needed a legal marriage, not a religious one, and I understand civil disagreement as the American way. I was not afraid the first time they denied me equal rights as an LGBTQ+ citizen, naively content in my youth to be persecuted as long as I was not prosecuted. I am no longer young.
I was concerned, but not even afraid when they demonized me simply for being who I am so that it would be easier for them to nurture the apathy of my friends and allies. Yes, I was slow to become properly afraid, but I am there now. Will this nation’s laws be rewritten to exclude my family from their protection?
“The issues you are concerned about just don’t affect my family…Nothing has been taken away from you so far…Why isn’t a power of attorney enough protection…You are just overreacting.” These are not the recent words of my oppressors. These are the recent words of my friends. They bruise. They sting. They demoralize.
I am finally and properly afraid because, in this last election cycle, many of those who claim to love me, and perhaps who really do love me as they understand the word, voted for their own comfort and, yes, some of them for their prejudices over my most fundamental right simply to exist. In short, they prioritized “the economy,” whatever that really means against the backdrop of basic human rights, above my right to remain married to my spouse of 23 years, their right to claim my Social Security if I die before them, and our fundamental right to be treated as the family we are in critical medical situations. Make no mistake, misguided Americans with fear and loathing for people like me are now coming for these rights and many others, and the people I thought would stand with me, the people I have stood alongside in so many of their personal struggles, are nowhere to be found. Millions who might not know me personally, but whom I have counted on to be like-minded, also seem to be sitting this one out.
It breaks my heart, and my heart is battle-scared, not easily broken.
I am white and male, and while I am by no means wealthy, I am socioeconomically privileged. I am well educated and highly employable, twice an openly gay college president who was able to rally people of good conscience from every sociopolitical point of view around a cause more important than any one of us, the success of our students. I am surrounded by people who love me, although that circle seems to be shrinking as I hold high the bar defining love.
So with all of these qualities which often equate to safety and security, why am I afraid?
I never hide from anything that I am or claim anything that is not mine to claim. I do not know what it feels like for the lands of indigenous people to have been conquered and taken from their ancestors. I do not know what it feels like to have African ancestors whose very bodies were colonized as they were brought here on slave ships to build treasure for people who look like me. I do not know what it feels like to be a parent separated from his, her, or their child at the border or to fear being deported. I do not know what it feels like to be a woman paid less than a man for doing the same job and being passed over for promotion because of my sex.
I do not know what it feels like to be neurodivergent and underserved by a sometimes uncaring and other times unprepared educational system. I do not know what it feels like to be Trans and in the middle of transition, or denied a medically-essential abortion, in both cases realizing that today in this nation their body is no longer their own to control. The list of what I do not know is endless, and I do not compare my personal experience or the degree of my disenfranchisement with any other person.
I do know what it feels like to be sitting in our own backyard with my spouse and our dogs only to hear a group of young men passing along on the street shout the word, “Faggots,” at the top of their voices, and to know they did so with impunity. I know what it feels like to hear my spouse relive being humiliated and traumatized by a coach in junior high school because they wanted to be in the girl’s line instead of in the boy’s line which was the “body appropriate” line for them. I know what it feels like to be a smart kid growing up in multi-generational poverty in the rural South with a sense that you are different, but that you must hide your differences to be accepted and loved. And I know the unhealable scars, internal and external, that can come from feeling forced to deceive others, but mostly from deceiving oneself.
At 53 and 59, my spouse and I are well into our sixth decade of life and our third decade together, and we know more than we should about being treated as second-class citizens. We know enough to experience real empathy for people of color, for women and immigrants, for our LGBTQ+ community, and for all people to whom this nation’s promise of “liberty and justice for all” seems to grow hollower by the day.
Please hear me say that we are no longer simply concerned. Some of us are angry. Some of us are sad. Almost all of us are afraid, my spouse and I so uncertain of what is to come that we will likely put our house in Mississippi on the market in January and face permanently giving up our home, flawed and challenging as it is, the place and the people and the culture that created us and to which we feel indebted, to build a new home in a progressive state that seems more likely to protect our right to exist while this nation built on the promise and the language of equality prepares to take back those rights it already affirmed.
We came home to Mississippi to be near our family and for me to accept a very special job at a college I have loved for 25 years, but somehow that does not weigh as much as the fear that my spouse could be gravely ill in a local hospital and that I could be denied the right to be by their side. After a brief period of feeling somewhat supported by our federal government, this scenario once again seems possible, even likely in much of this nation.
Do not tell me you love me and turn a blind eye to the attempted annihilation of my family, and do not assume that I will go down easily, if at all. Would you not do whatever is necessary to protect your family, and if so, how can I be expected to do less for mine? That will likely begin by taking them to a safer place as quickly as possible.
Be advised that the greatest lessons of being oppressed are resiliency and hope. We will make another stand because one can be brave and afraid at the same time. My family has the resources needed to start fresh in another place, and I believe there is a community somewhere that will value our diversity as something to celebrate rather than something to barely tolerate. I fear for those like us who do not have as many options.
“Special rights” have never been our expectation; equal rights have been. We honor and thank those still standing with us. Let the record show when we have gone that we did not leave our home or our friends and allies. Sadly, instead, too many of them left us standing alone.
Dr. Chris Gilmer is Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Social Justice and a tenured professor of English at Tougaloo College.