On Tuesday, Nov. 12, Hoyt Hall buzzed with over 30 people as the Frederick Douglass Institute and the Department of Black Studies hosted the Town Hall: Post-Election Reflection, One Week After. The event, spanning just over 90 minutes, was comprised of two parts: a panel discussion and a town hall session.
The panel consisted of four professors: Fredrick Douglass Professor and Associate Professor of English and Black Studies Jeffrey Q. McCune, Jr, Assistant Professor of Black Studies Philip V. McHarris, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature Vialcary Crisóstomo, and Professor of English and Black Studies Stefanie K. Dunning.
The event started with a clarification from McCune regarding the topic and content of the talks.
“First I want to say, if you don’t know, this is sponsored by the Department of Black Studies and the Frederick Douglass Institute,” McCune said, “which means that the story we are telling is one that does not disaggregate or separate Blackness, race, anti-Blackness, white supremacy from the conversation of what has happened in this county.”
McCune went on to summarize Vice President Kamala Harris’ experiences during her 107-day campaign, from optimism to the use of gender slurs and questions about her race. He also touched on the “white supremacist rhetoric” and “white patriarchal speech” of the Trump campaign, citing instances where Trump called Puerto Rico an island of garbage and compared Detroit to a developing nation. This election revealed where the United States’ priorities lie, he concluded.
“I think that what has not been explored is how the message of the vote, or this election, speaks [to] cultural priorities,” McCune stated. “On one hand, the people chose a Hitler-brandishing, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion criminal over a joyful, articulate, well-experienced vice president of the United States. On the other hand, and probably a bigger problem for me, and not the one that most people are thinking about, is the way that folks said women’s rights, queer rights, and black freed, Latinx justice, was less important than a one-dollar decrease in bread, Christian dogma, mass de-nationalism, and other communited to capital gains and America’s imagining of a homogenous America.”
McHarris, the next speaker, gave advice to students experiencing difficulties following the election results. He emphasized participating in activities that cannot be taken away from you — for him, enjoying time with his new puppy — and leaning into a community that exudes love and care as well as advancement and resistance.
McHarris also asked how we ended up here and how we can move forward, while questioning the status quo of political life in the United States. He said that the Democratic Party is not capable of responding to concerns of the Republican Party and speaking to the interests and wants of Americans.
“I think we need to start asking deeper questions around the nation state as a category and a political container for how we understand everyday life,” McHarris said. “Because a part of what we see is, like, there are certain laws, rules, expectations, approaches to how we approach political life. But why is it that this is the way that we approach political life? It’s because some people with power decided that this would be the case and other people with power have preserved it.”
Crisóstomo, the next speaker, refuted the claims that the Latino vote swayed the election towards Trump by going through the percentages of voters to show that the vast majority of Latino voters voted against Trump. She then refuted the claim that Latino voters chose Trump out of patriarchal beliefs that a woman should not govern the country, pointing out that Latin America has had women as head of states since the 1970s and that there are also currently female presidents in both Mexico and Honduras.
In addition, Crisóstomo discussed the hazards of thinking of the Latinx population as a monolithic group, especially considering differences within the demographic in terms of race, education, socioeconomic status, and reasons for migration to the United States. She also discussed how, in understanding why someone voted the way they did, it is important to consider their reason for migration and the political discourse in their home country. According to Crisóstomo, words like “progressive” hold connotations of leftist dictatorship for people who migrated from Cuba and Venezuela, which can influence voting.
Dunning started off by instructing the audience to close their eyes and take 20 deep breaths. She explained that this was done to give the audience a minute to process as our society forces us to resume normal routine without time to grieve and feel fear. She explained her experience of exhaustion on what she called the “electoral rollercoaster,” in which every four years, she has to anticipate what world she will be living in. Her advice for the audience was to take time and make space for regulating their nervous systems while not strategizing about the next political movements.
Dunning also emphasized the importance of disrupting the view that there are benefactors from oppression.
“There are people who think racism benefits them because they’re white, and it doesn’t,” Dunning said. “Racism does not benefit white people. It may give people a feeling of power, it may give people some sadistic enjoyment, but it doesn’t benefit them. Patriarchy does not benefit men. It doesn’t make life better for men. Homophobia and transphobia don’t make things better for straight people or cis people. All of these forms of oppression endanger everyone. They just endanger us differently.”
“The moment that the people who are engaged in promoting these kinds of politics realize that it’s not getting them anything, they will be much less likely to support those politics,” Dunning concluded.
Once the panel discussion ended, the event switched to the town hall portion where audience members could walk to a microphone at the front and ask their questions.
One student asked how the election would impact the environment on campus.
“I mean, the good news is that this is a private institution, and also it’s in New York State, and the New York State governor has also, sort of, basically vowed to do everything in her power to protect the freedoms of New Yorkers. And so, there’s a little bit of a buffer there, but that isn’t to say that even private institutions won’t experience some discomfort to say the least,” Dunning said. “But I can just tell you that myself as Director of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, and Jeffrey as Chair of Black Studies, and other departments are committed to maintaining what we have in terms of programming and offering students, and responding in nimble ways to whatever happens.”
Professor McCune ended the event by thanking the audience for their questions and instilling one final takeaway, seemingly referring to the adage of stars shining through darkness in Kamala Harris’ concession speech.
“Even if it’s dark, I think we do have to remember that we are in fact stars who have the possibility to light up the earth and the world with our imaginations, with new systems, with new communities, with new ways of being, with new identities, with new ideologies. We have that opportunity.” McCune concluded. “So, go out and be a star.”
Editor’s note: Professor Vialcary Crisóstomo’s last name was corrected.
