Election night, though I have tried to sleep, I have not found rest. Bile has risen in my throat and I have openly let my tears fall. We have been faced with two roads, and, among our democracy and our model government, we have chosen this. And this is America.
This, which lets the people unleash their hate without consequence, this which tells the oppressed to get over it and allow themselves to be broken and killed; this which parades as freedom but resonates in my heart as slavery.
I have long felt the repercussions of the choices of my predecessors, but now their actions ring louder and clearer than ever before. I grew up being only a little scared, being told that I probably would not be killed, that I have my rights. Where are those rights going to go under the leadership of white men who understand nothing about the word “love” besides how they get a tickle when they assault a woman, how they claim to be afraid of that suspicious black man, that Muslim woman, that Mexican. These men that now control our country are exactly that — they represent the fear of everyone in our country, everyone in the world.
Well, we can be afraid too. I am a woman, and as a woman, I am afraid. I am black, and as a black person, I am afraid. I am gay, and as a gay person, I am afraid. I am all of these things and I am afraid, but I am not the only one.
We are all afraid. We are afraid for our families, our friends, our rights; we are afraid for our lives. When those men created the United States of America a long time ago, they made sure to include the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in their document. Shouldn’t that apply to all of us, not just those among us who have more money, more power and more of a voice?
We spoke Election Day and chose this. We have been divided for a very long time, and many of us thought that we were finally beginning to heal that wound of fear and hate, but we just tripped and snagged it on our own front porch.
And I am telling you all this: we must stop thinking in terms of Us versus Them. We must stop distinguishing people by the color of their skin, their gender, their religion, and who they love. We have tried that already, and it has only created deeper veins of segregation and that fear within us.
We must try our hardest to stand together instead of apart by our differences, because otherwise, we will soon be standing upon the same earth, with the same people, but it will be a different country and a different world.
This is America, the land of the free! We want to remain free from the second we are born until our dying breath; we want to be living rather than hiding. And yet we have chosen this.
We have another choice now: We can choose to either stand together and defend our core values in the face of hate, or we can stand apart and preach hate disguised behind different words and different people. This is America, and we must remain American in name and in values.
Charlotte Harrison, of Hadley, is a junior at Northampton High School.