“We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace…” Amanda Gorman.

Throughout these last four years I’ve repeatedly said that I am incredibly grateful for the term of the 45th president of the United States. Why? This was the minor explosion that fully exposed the intensely destructive heat of hatred in the core of the nation. Trump was not the issue, he was thankfully the spewing rock that signalled the lurking danger of the eruption of hidden festered hatred. We should be grateful that we can no longer mask the mess; it was poisonous, painful.

During President and Mrs. Obama’s eight years of service to their country as President and First Lady, the monstrous volcano of racism began to publicly rumble at about a level 2, code yellow, with cowardly attacks of chicken and watermelon derision, the constant birth certificate requests spearheaded by the Manhattan real estate tycoon who could do a better job, and repeated loads of sulphuric vitriol directed at the First Family. The sanctioned racially motivated attacks on Michelle Obama during their presidential campaign were unconscionable and unrelenting. Mount Bigotry was no longer just comfortably poisoning the daily lives of BIPOCs with deadly silence. We knew that quiet did not mean peace. Up till then we had been choking on the fumes. It was stealing our oxygen. We could not collectively breathe. And our panicked eyes and muted screams were being ignored.

Then, on June 16, 2015 there were warning bells that signalled Mount Bigotry’s possible escalation to level orange. Instead of carefully assessing the danger, and collaborating with the people on how to get to safety together, the two powers began to squabble for supremacy, drawing the masses into their unhealthy ruckus with rhetoric designed to polarize, designed to inflame emotions that bypassed the seat of reason, that eliminated the need for accountability and which settled instead for mind-numbing, baudy entertainment.

And we continued to gasp for breath, though sometimes they would pull one of us out to the surface where the air was cleaner, and they would direct the controllers of the bellows that pumped that sulphuric vitriol into our atmosphere to move less vigorously in the environs of that one, so that they could stand as the bait of hope, knowing full well that there was no real intention of bringing us all to the surface to fill our lungs with breath, the essence of life. And while they breathed, we still gasped for breath.

Poor funding of schools for us by us. Quiet.
Affirmative action with many left behind. Quiet.
Integration into a pool of hatred. Quiet. Eventually.
Planned parenthood. Quiet.
Food deserts. Quiet.
Policies that splinter our families through child protection and prison. Quiet. Saviour. Quiet.
Cheap labour through undocumented immigration. Quiet.

Quiet is not always peace.

And so the hazard level continued to rise, until it finally hit level orange. The dwelling of a black family in the White House interrupted the unholy quiet, the temperature began to rise. Imminent eruption. And the people blamed the hazard level. Blame the orange.

I’ve listened to Mrs. Obama lament the fact that many black people did not vote in the 2016 election. I don’t think she understands how those eight years of attacks on her family dampened hope. Trayvon, Tamir, Michael, Sandra, worshippers in Charleston, Philando, shot dead. And amidst all of that crushing weight, no candidate for leadership spoke hope, they incited hatred and division, deplorables and losers. So heavy. So hot. So suffocating.

And now. Now again, someone has begun to speak of hope. And even though they are speaking of hope, make no mistake, this change, this shifting of the orange level downwards was wrought by people like Stacey Abrams who guided black, indigenous, and other people of colour out of harm’s way, who empowered us to walk ourselves out of harm’s way. Another Moses risen.

We’re not gasping anymore. We are standing. And if we who are now standing, can combine strengths with those who have seen how close they came to a destructive hate-filled explosion, we can eventually lift voices together in loud celebrations of real love and unity. Then we will know peace.