"America loves winners, but victory does not absolve" Chimamanda Adichie on moral duty in the wake of Trump's election

In a post published on The New Yorker, acclaimed
Nigerian writer writes on race, identity, politics,
misogyny, the media and our moral duty after the
election of Donald Trump as the President of
America. Read below.
"America has always been aspirational to me,
Even when I chafed at its hypocrisies, it
somehow always seemed sure, a nation that
knew what it was doing,
refreshingly free of that anything-can-happen
existential uncertainty so familiar to developing
nations. But no longer. The election of Donald Trump
has flattened the poetry in America’s founding
philosophy: the country born from an idea of
freedom is to be governed by an unstable,
stubbornly uninformed, authoritarian demagogue. And
in response to this there are people living in
visceral fear, people anxiously trying to discern
policy from bluster, and people kowtowing as though
to a new king. Things that were recently pushed to
the corners of America’s political space—overt
racism, glaring misogyny, anti-intellectualism—are
once again creeping to the center.
Now is the time to resist the slightest extension
in the boundaries of what is right and just. Now is
the time to speak up and to wear as a badge of
honor the opprobrium of bigots. Now is the time to
confront the weak core at the heart of America’s
addiction to optimism; it allows too little room for
resilience, and too much for fragility. Hazy visions
of “healing” and “not becoming the hate we
hate” sound dangerously like appeasement. The
responsibility to forge unity belongs not to the
denigrated but to the denigrators. The premise for
empathy has to be equal humanity; it is an
injustice to demand that the maligned identify with
those who question their humanity.
America loves winners, but victory does not absolve.
Victory, especially a slender one decided by a few
thousand votes in a handful of states, does not
guarantee respect. Nobody automatically deserves
deference on ascending to the leadership of any
country. American journalists know this only too well
when reporting on foreign leaders—their default
mode with Africans, for instance, is nearly always
barely concealed disdain. President Obama endured
disrespect from all quarters. By far the most
egregious insult directed toward him, the racist
movement tamely termed “birtherism,” was
championed by Trump.
Yet, a day after the election, I heard a journalist
on the radio speak of the vitriol between Obama
and Trump. No, the vitriol was Trump’s. Now is
the time to burn false equivalencies forever.
Pretending that both sides of an issue are equal
when they are not is not “balanced” journalism;
it is a fairy tale—and, unlike most fairy tales, a
disingenuous one.
Now is the time to refuse the blurring of memory.
Each mention of “gridlock” under Obama must be
wrought in truth: that “gridlock” was a deliberate
and systematic refusal of the Republican Congress
to work with him. Now is the time to call things
what they actually are, because language can
illuminate truth as much as it can obfuscate it.
Now is the time to forge new words. “Alt-right”
is benign. “White-supremacist right” is more
accurate.
Now is the time to talk about what we are
actually talking about. “Climate contrarian”
obfuscates. “Climate-change denier” does not.
And because climate change is scientific fact, not
opinion, this matters.
Now is the time to discard that carefulness that
too closely resembles a lack of conviction. The
election is not a “simple racism story,” because
no racism story is ever a “simple” racism story,
in which grinning evil people wearing white burn
crosses in yards. A racism story is complicated, but
it is still a racism story, and it is worth parsing.
Now is not the time to tiptoe around historical
references. Recalling Nazism is not extreme; it is
the astute response of those who know that
history gives both context and warning.
Now is the time to recalibrate the default
assumptions of American political discourse. Identity
politics is not the sole preserve of minority voters.
This election is a reminder that identity politics in
America is a white invention: it was the basis of
segregation. The denial of civil rights to black
Americans had at its core the idea that a black
American should not be allowed to vote because
that black American was not white. The endless
questioning, before the election of Obama, about
America’s “readiness” for a black President was
a reaction to white identity politics. Yet “identity
politics” has come to be associated with
minorities, and often with a patronizing
undercurrent, as though to refer to nonwhite people
motivated by an irrational herd instinct. White
Americans have practiced identity politics since the
inception of America, but it is now laid bare,
impossible to evade.
Now is the time for the media, on the left and
right, to educate and inform. To be nimble and
alert, clear-eyed and skeptical, active rather than
reactive. To make clear choices about what truly
matters.
Now is the time to put the idea of the “liberal
bubble” to rest. The reality of American tribalism
is that different groups all live in bubbles. Now is
the time to acknowledge the ways in which
Democrats have condescended to the white working
class—and to acknowledge that Trump condescends
to it by selling it fantasies. Now is the time to
remember that there are working-class Americans
who are not white and who have suffered the same
deprivations and are equally worthy of news profiles.
Now is the time to remember that “women” does
not equal white women. “Women” must mean all
women.
Now is the time to elevate the art of questioning.
Is the only valid resentment in America that of
white males? If we are to be sympathetic to the
idea that economic anxieties lead to questionable
decisions, does this apply to all groups? Who
exactly are the élite?
Now is the time to frame the questions differently.
If everything remained the same, and Hillary Clinton
were a man, would she still engender an overheated,
outsized hostility? Would a woman who behaved
exactly like Trump be elected? Now is the time to
stop suggesting that sexism was absent in the
election because white women did not overwhelmingly
vote for Clinton. Misogyny is not the sole preserve
of men.
The case for women is not that they are inherently
better or more moral. It is that they are half of
humanity and should have the same opportunities—
and be judged according to the same standards—as
the other half. Clinton was expected to be perfect,
according to contradictory standards, in an election
that became a referendum on her likability.
Now is the time to ask why America is far behind
many other countries (see: Rwanda) in its
representation of women in politics. Now is the
time to explore mainstream attitudes toward
women’s ambition, to ponder to what extent the
ordinary political calculations that all politicians
make translate as moral failures when we see them
in women. Clinton’s careful calibration was read as
deviousness. But would a male politician who is
carefully calibrated—Mitt Romney, for example—
merely read as carefully calibrated?
Now is the time to be precise about the meanings
of words. Trump saying “They let you do it”
about assaulting women does not imply consent,
because consent is what happens before an act.
Now is the time to remember that, in a wave of
dark populism sweeping the West, there are
alternative forms. Bernie Sanders’s message did
not scapegoat the vulnerable. Obama rode a populist
wave before his first election, one marked by a
remarkable inclusiveness. Now is the time to
counter lies with facts, repeatedly and unflaggingly,
while also proclaiming the greater truths: of our
equal humanity, of decency, of compassion. Every
precious ideal must be reiterated, every obvious
argument made, because an ugly idea left
unchallenged begins to turn the color of normal. It
does not have to be like this."
Source: Newyorker.com