Confederate flags seemed omnipresent. I saw them in Pittsburgh, in North Carolina, in San Diego and in Florida. When I noted the flags, people on Twitter would ask why I was so obsessed with race.
But race — as a black woman in America — is something so many of us are acutely aware of. It is the lens through which everything is filtered.
For a long time, Trump didn’t address race directly on the stump. He had retweeted false statistics about black-on-black crime and was sued in the 1960s for allegedly barring tenants of color from his New York City rental properties. He perpetuated the lie that Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, was not born in this country.
But then, in early August, he began to appeal to “the African-Americans,” proclaiming that we lived in inner cities where “you walk down the street and get shot.” He painted a grim picture, saying there were no jobs, no education, no promise.
He ignored the evidence that more black people in this country live in the suburbs than anywhere else or that, according to 2015 census data, 52.9 percent of black Americans age 25 or older have attended some college.
And then there were the dog whistles. He was endorsed by the magazine of the Ku Klux Klan (an endorsement the campaign denounced), he was hailed by white nationalists like William Johnson as their choice, and he was praised by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, who celebrated Trump’s win, exclaiming on Twitter, “Our people have played a HUGE role in electing Trump.”
Many of his supporters on social media have changed their avatars to a picture of Pepe the Frog, a symbol of the alt-right, a white nationalist movement. Trump called for temporarily barring Muslims from entering the U.S. and would famously recite the poem “The Snake” to liken refugees to a snake lying in wait to kill freedom-loving Americans.
But in spite all this, Trump is the man that America elected to be president — a candidacy that was as unprecedented as it was polarizing.
He often proclaimed that African-Americans and the Latinos “love me.” An analysis of exit polling reveals that Trump garnered 8 percent of the African-American vote — larger than the share captured by Mitt Romney — likely a benefit of his not running against a black man. But Trump did not win the “95 percent” of the black vote he said he’d accrue.
His victory was carried instead on the backs of white voters who turned out in droves for him. In many states, including Florida and North Carolina, it was the increased white turnout that thrust him to victory. The country’s vote was split along racial lines, once again.
On election night, a friend mused about what his election meant, how it could have happened. “It’s the undying power of white supremacy,” he said.
A new chapter in U.S. history unfolds. Election night is when the people’s voices are heard, their votes traditionally seen as the nation’s referendum on the ideas and choices presented to them.
But this election gives no such clarity. We’re left with an uncertain path forward and questions that have no clear answers.
Will we ever again live in states that are united? Were we ever, really?
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ABC News
PHOTO: ABC News' Candace Smith films Donald Trump during the second presidential debate at Hofstra University in Long Island, N.Y., Sept. 26, 2016.
