Roxane Gay, in her January 12th column, “No One Is Coming to Save Us From Trump’s Racism,”[nytimes] tells us to sit down for awhile. “We need to sit with the discomfort of the president of the United States referring to several countries as ‘shitholes’ during a meeting, a meeting that continued after his comments.”
This daughter of Haitian immigrants is not going to do what people expect her to do: “remind Americans, once more, of Haiti’s value, as if we deserve consideration and a modicum of respect from the president of the United States only because as a people we are virtuous enough.”
She has “lost patience with the shock supposedly well-meaning people express every time Mr. Trump says or does something terrible but well in character.” She is “not going to turn this into a teaching moment to justify the existence of millions of Haitian or African or El Salvadoran people because of the gleeful, unchecked racism of a world leader.” Instead, she acknowledges the pain and discomfort. She writes, “Instead of trying to get past this moment, we should sit with it, wrap ourselves in the sorrow, distress, and humiliation of it.”
The first comment I read (in the comment section) understood what she was calling us to do: “As in any addiction recovery program, we have to sit down and acknowledge some fundamental truths: This is not an exceptional nation, this is not the country on a shining hill, and this is not the country that spreads democracy around the world. Donald Trump is simply the symptom of an illness we have to address.” This commenter is pointing to the first step in recovery: “We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable.” It is the step we take in order to come out of the denial of our true condition. As the commenter continues: “Step 1 will confront us with uncomfortable truths, but it will address reality, not fiction.”
The United States of America, as a nation, managed to put Donald Trump into the office of the presidency. His presence there tells us about ourselves. His presence in that office is a mirror. And before we come up with another fix for how we are going to save ourselves, we need to sit in front of the mirror. We must “wrap ourselves in the sorrow, distress and humiliation” of our condition as a nation. We must acknowledge how unmanageable our life as a nation has become and how helpless we are. We must confront the addiction and disease of our racism. We must sit with it. Grieve. Desire change. Let the pain of our condition make us ready for help.
We need to sit with it until we know we truly need help. And be open for the help. Wait with the truth of our condition and be open. Only then will we find the additional steps that we must take. They will be given to us.