Dear White America: You Are All Responsible for Trump

May 5, 2016 / Josette Souza

(Content warning: racial slurs)

Many people considered Donald Trump’s campaign a joke at first – but now he’s the Republican Presidential nominee. So how in the world did we get here?

This comic reveals the truth about how Trump didn’t appear out of thin air – and how everyone in White America had a role in getting him so close to the presidency.

These are snapshots of your classrooms, your family dinner tables, the microaggressions you’ve witnessed and committed, and more. They all add up to create a climate in which an unapologetically racist, xenophobic, and sexist man can get a shot at the most powerful position in the United States.

Does any of it look familiar?

Here’s a chance to reflect on how to do the right thing next time, so we can stop people like Trump – even before they seem like a threat to you.

With Love,
The Editors at Everyday Feminism

Click for the Transcript

Panel 1

Text: Dear white America, Trump wasn’t born out of thin air.

(A picture of Trump looking up from a podium with the “Trump: Make American Great” slogan below him.)

Panel 2

Text: He has always been with you.

(A white woman is grabbing her child away from a Black man walking on the street.)

Panel 3

Text: In every one of your classrooms.

(Three children sitting on the floor. One white child is speaking to another white child saying “Why can’t you play Uno with a Mexican? Because they steal all the green cards!” with a Mexican student looking upset with tears in his eyes.)

Panel 4

Text: At every one of your Thanksgiving tables.

(Scene of a family at the dinner table. A white man is shouting angrily “If they didn’t have so many babies, they wouldn’t need handouts!”.)

Panel 5

Text: In each and every moment fear and love tugged at your heart so strongly…

[A white man is pounding his fist on a table, with a paper that says “laid off” in front of him. He is shouting “These damn wetbacks will pay for stealing our jobs!”

Panel 6

Text: they poured out of you in the form of violence.

(The teenager from Panel 5 is shown at a Trump rally shouting “Build the wall!” while others in the crowd yell “Deport them all!”

Across from that scene is a scene showing the mom from Panel 5 at a Bernie rally shouting “Boooo! All lives matter!” while people in the crowd yell “Get off the stage monkeys,” “Shut up you thugs!!” and “Booooo!”)

Text: He is continuously born and reborn through each and every injustice…

Panel 7

Text: your actions,

(A white woman is crying and saying “But I didn’t mean for it to be racist—“ while a white man comforts her saying “It’s okay, don’t cry.” A Black woman to their left looks upset and says “But that’s not the point.”)

Panel 8

Text: inactions,

(A white man is walking past a mosque graffitied with the words “Islam Is Terrorism.”)

Panel 9

Text: and silences allow to pass.

(“Je Suis Charlie” written in big thick white letters on a black background.)

Panel 10

He wasn’t a problem when he was only coming after us,

(A picture of Trump with a large speech bubble with three of his racist quotes, one from 2000, 2013, and 2015 each claiming Black people, Latinos, and Native Americans are criminals and that he’d ban muslims if he becomes president.]

Panel 11

Text: but now that he’s become a threat to you and the entire country, now he’s a problem?

He is your creation and your responsibility. You can no longer afford to ignore us, erase us, and stand by as our rights, dignity, and lives are taken away.

Panel 12

Text: Each injustice builds upon the last, until no one is left unharmed.

(An image of the not too distant future where a Muslim woman, a Mexican man, a disabled black woman, a Native trans person, and other marginalized people are being rounded up and deported, a sign beside them reading “Deportation: Class A undesireables this way —>.”)

Panel 13

Text: When the next moment arises and the next and the next, will you find the courage within you to do the right thing?

Will you?

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Josette Souza is the Program Coordinator for Everyday Feminism. She’s a working-class Afro-latinx and recent first-generation college graduate who just moved back to the US from Mexico. Her favorite things in the world are Black liberation, intersectional feminism, and offering her condolences to the people who failed to bring her down by telling her that getting a degree in Africana studies would mean never getting a good job.