Metro Detroit Reacts To Election of Donald Trump

WDET Joan Isabella

The following sentiments were shared on Detroit Today by host Stephen Henderson:

Donald Trump will be president of the United States. 

I know I’m not alone when I say I never, ever thought I’d say those words. 

I’m definitely not alone in fearing – yes, fearing – that this outcome is not just about policy choice. It is about fundamental direction, and it invites a clear misery that could be visited on all kinds of Americans.

Muslims. Latinos. African-Americans. 

Donald Trump made certain during his campaign to let us all know what he thinks of us, and how he differentiates our place in this country, our very Americanism, from that of other people. 

And the folks who voted for him? At best, they were able, in way I may never understand, to overlook the misery Donald Trump promises to rain down on marginalized demographic groups. 

Do we not matter?

Are our liberties not worthy of vigorous defense?

Are they expendable in a way that allows Americans to elevate other interests above them? 

Do most Americans not have our backs? 

I’m certainly not alone, this morning, in asking those questions of many voters in the country I love.  I doubt I’m alone in thinking this is a wake-up call. 

And of course, I also understand, on some level, the frustration and anger that Trump’s supporters are feeling, and now expressing. 

Lost opportunity is worse, and more painful, than opportunity that was never there. The things people have lost in recent years, the slow recovery of so many Americans from the depths of our economic crisis – that’s real. 

But I’m also resigned this morning. And insistent. 

I’m resigned to the electoral results because I’m an American, and this is the system we have, the only one that even promises the protections and opportunities we cherish. 

Donald Trump is president because he won the election. We must respect that, even if we can’t rejoice in it. We must remember the bitter dismissal, and attacks that greeted President Barack Obama from day one in the White House, and resist the temptation to indulge turnabout. 

America is greater than that. 

And I’m insistent that my place in this country, fraught with the history of slavery and Jim Crow, and now who knows what from a Trump administration, calls me to the kind of small-D democratic resistance that will push back, and stand up. 

We can do better than this, I know it. 

And because this is America, because this is still the country I love,  I still believe we will. 

To hear from pundits Kelly Rossman-McKinney (a Democrat) and John Truscott (a Republican) of Truscott Rossman on Detroit Today, click on the audio player above.

The opinions of Stephen Henderson are his own, and do not represent WDET as a whole.