Healing time in the US

To say this was a complicated election is a gross understatement.

This happened to be an election between two hugely unpopular and often dishonest candidates: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. To say this election came down to race is oversimplifying a litany of American woes.

Without a doubt, there are WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants) who feel like an endangered species and voted for what they perceived to be their own self-preservation. Some voters clung to a sense of nostalgia.

They longed to return to a time when they felt a sense of control because they perceive that the new tapestry of ethnicities that define the US to be unravelling their experiences of the past defined by comfort and pride.

The problem is we can’t reclaim those bygone days. The world has moved on.

This election demonstrated how angry Americans are and how marginalised the middle class feels. People feel fed up with not being able to make ends meet; with working longer, harder hours — often shifts that prevent them from getting a second job — and getting less pay.

Yes, you can throw sexism, racism and xenophobia into the mix and pin that on many people who voted for Trump, but those three evils do not define the US.

The US that I know is defined by its independence, fairness and resilience. These three qualities will see us through the troubled times ahead.

You only have to look at the Civil Rights Movement and the election of Barack Obama as President of the US to know how many brave people have stood for independence and fairness. Many people have put their lives on the line for those principles. In trying times — including economic, political and environmental disasters — Americans have proved to be a resilient people.

The US is a country that is really made up of 11 nations — separate areas defined by their history and their ethnicity, and yet it manages to function as a whole with differences that keep surfacing over time. The US began as a shaky confederacy of 13 colonies that functioned as separate countries, and it formed a union that met its challenges and ironed out its differences — not always quickly or perfectly, but most often to a workable degree.

This is the only election I have ever voted in which made me feel sad, scared and worried about what the future holds. It was totally void of the values I hold dear: honesty, integrity and fairness, yet I know these values exist and they will resurface in US culture.

It is an election which will define the US well beyond the fouryear term that Trump will serve because he will likely be appointing four Supreme Court justices.

He will choose conservative justices who will leave their mark on society for the next 50 years.

And yet, this is an election that has renewed my sense of duty to a country that I have not lived in for some time. I don’t take my history or my citizenship for granted.

I know there is work to do and I have to find ways to make a difference in both countries that I hold dear : Trinidad and Tobago and the US.

Let the work of healing begin.