Felicia Kornbluh: Goodbye to all that liberal optimism

Editor’s note: This commentary is by Felicia Kornbluh, an associate professor of history and gender, sexuality, and women’s studies at the University of Vermont in Burlington. She is the former president of United Academics, the AFT/AAUP affiliate that represents faculty there. This piece was first published on the AFT blog. 

After the devastating election of Donald Trump, with his hateful misogyny, racism and religious intolerance, I am fearful. It is not helping that some on my campus are responding as though our situation has not changed dramatically. One colleague suggested an emergency meeting  —  great idea  —  and received support and interest, but not one actually scheduled the meeting. (We decided to convene our local’s Civil Rights Committee after Thanksgiving break.)

It is important to remember that the Trump people mean business about eliminating public-sector unions. Newt Gingrich, who is expected to play a key role in a Trump administration, has said job No. 1 would be to turn the whole country into Wisconsin, a state where public-sector unions have been decimated.

I am an ardent trade unionist from a pro-union family. I am queer and Jewish and the stepdaughter of a guy who was blacklisted in higher education for being a suspected communist. But it’s not just about me. I teach feminists and queer kids and lots of students who are tagged as “the hippy” in the family. The election itself, the theater of degradation toward women and abusive disregard for women’s integrity that it was, was hard enough to bear. The vindication of Trump’s and Bannon’s politics is almost too much for many of us.

There are liberals and radicals and not too many conservatives in our university community. Some radicals want to brush past gender and race and disability and sexuality and religion, to focus on the “larger” or “underlying” (or “overarching”) issue of class-based insecurity and economic pain.

I don’t have a great deal of patience for that right now. I think that analysis is based on a mistaken understanding of what motivates people, and it overlooks too much about the election our country just completed. To separate people’s “economic” interests from their other characteristics, my scholarly training and my instincts both tell me, is to operate with a faulty understanding of history and identity.

I ask colleagues to assimilate my sense of urgency, and some of my students’ pain, and the fear experienced by Muslims and new Americans and non-white people and trans kids and disabled people, some of whom don’t feel safe walking the streets. Case in point: during a “Love Trumps Hate” rally on the Friday after the election, a speaker advised us all to leave in pairs, “Buddy system, y’all,” because he thought we might be at risk in broad daylight in Bernie Sanders’ hometown.

One poignant thing: My class had a post-election discussion on the Thursday after Trump’s victory. I invited the students to write something as a group, as a way to share their expertise as Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies people with the rest of the university community. They chose to focus, in part, on creating a survival guide for students heading home for the holidays to families and communities that might not be supportive. I love them for that.

Here it is, handy for any time when difficult discussions are underway.