THIS IS THE 2ND COMMENTARY IN VOICES4HILLARY'S MILLENNIALS & HILLARY SERIES.
MILLENNIALS ARE A DIVERSE GROUP, AND ARE CONCERNED ABOUT DIVERSE ISSUES. THAT WILL BE CLEAR TO YOU WHEN YOU READ CHARLOTTE MARTIN'S PERSONAL STORY.
NOT ALL MILLENNIALS ARE STRAIGHT
By CHARLOTTE MARTIN
It's July, 2013. I'm in Brooklyn. It's 95 degrees. I'm 19 years old, and I've spent the whole day canvassing Brooklyn Heights, my first real experience in field work for a local politician, Democratic, of course.
I had been working since early June, but my canvassing partner-- Let's call him Marcus-- was new this week. As we walked back to the office, we began talking about politics. Shortly into the conversation, he launched into a diatribe, half lecture and half rant, on why he thought America was going down the tubes. "Ever since the 1950s, things have just gotten worse! The economy, our values, everything! Name one thing that has improved in the past 50 years!" he raved.
Being a gay woman, I balked. Was this a trick question?
"Civil rights," I said, taken aback by this whole conversation. Marcus huffed and replied "well, only for certain groups…" Our conversation quickly dissolved into a heated argument, where he revealed he was a Republican at heart, only doing this job because it paid. He told me that because I was gay, I should not be able to marry or have children-- "we just don't know what it does to kids."
By the time we reached the office, I was sick to my stomach. He'd argued that women "do best" in the home, that certain races have "mental advantages," and many other atrocious things. The next day, Marcus asked if we could go to lunch together, because "I really enjoyed arguing with you, let's talk more."
I was already disturbed by his bigotry the previous day, but this felt like a whole new punch in the gut. The afternoon had been fun for him.
For Marcus, this debate was an enjoyable pastime, just talk, no more serious than if we were debating the merits of chocolate versus vanilla ice cream. He was wholly unaware of what it felt like to be told you are a second class citizen. He couldn't understand why I wouldn't go.
When I called him a bigot, he became angry, telling me "these are just my opinions, and you have to respect them!" That he could demand I respect his opinions while he failed to respect my personhood revealed a lot about his way of thinking. It is one thing to debate politics and ethics. It is another to be wholly ignorant of someone's struggle and to lack basic respect for others. The campaign we worked for folded a few weeks later, and I never spoke to him again.
I've been thinking about Marcus a lot this election. When Trump rolled out his slogan "make America great again," Marcus immediately came to my mind. I wondered if he was sporting one of those awful red caps.
Trump's slogan, emblazoned on baseball caps, is a throw-back to a Reagan slogan. See the pin below.
"Make America great again" is a slogan that is so ignorant, so unaware of struggle. The people who this slogan resonates with are individuals who are willfully unaware of a past where women's career options were limited, where gay Americans lived in secret, where black Americans were beaten and killed for daring to demand equality.I do not mean to say the past was entirely shrouded in darkness. The 1950s and 60s saw some truly amazing economic improvement-- primarily for white, straight men. I don't know many women, people of color, or gay Americans, who yearn for the past and who fantasize about living in a world that considered them lesser.
Just recently, when speaking to my grandmother about Hillary's candidacy, she told me "you-- you just can't imagine what this is like. You just don't know. Women didn't used to have these kind of options..." This is something that people like Marcus-- and a large number of Trump's supporters-- fail to grasp.
When I look at the candidates in this election, one stands out as uniquely equipped to take on this ill conceived notion. I can trust that Hillary Clinton is not fooled by grandiose notions of the past because she has lived it.
She came of age in a time where women were denied rights and respect, she became politically active after seeing Martin Luther King speak. She has spent the better part of her life in a world where getting sick also meant going broke, where gay Americans had no legal protections.
And when she faced discrimination or saw hatred, she committed to trying to build a better future.
I do not worry that she holds any false notions about the last half century. I've always thought it corny to quote the founding fathers in situations like this, but this week I came across this quote from Thomas Jefferson, "I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past." I'm in agreement with Jefferson on this matter, and I know Hillary is too.
