By Marquis Bey
I want to be clear from the jump: I am thoroughly uninterested in Trump. I am uninterested in the latest ill he signs into law or the newest remark that offends the next marginalized demographic. To be clear, all of these antics of his matter a great deal, as the laws have visceral effects on marginalized people and his comments leave psychological scars on those toward whom they are aimed. My disinterest stems from, at base, the knowledge that all of this is terribly, terribly old news for some of us.
I may be in the minority on this, though. Which is fine, truly. But I’ve encountered a peculiar phenomenon as of late in light of what seems to be the intensification of Trump-adjacent stories. In the wake of the Kavanaugh appointment, Kanye West’s visit with 45, and the general climate of terribleness that is the nation under this current presidential regime, there has also been an intensification of the performance of hatred.
I am not speaking of that coming from the executive branch of the government; this hatred is that of the “well-meaning,†“liberal†folks who presume that their political work ends at the precise moment when they declare that they “hate Trump.â€
There is, in short, a tendency for often white, often moderately progressive folks to think that they are indeed “woke†simply because they purportedly despise Donald Trump. There was the white woman who I heard say that a guy she went on a first date with was likely a good guy because of his dislike of Trump, disregarding the slew of other incompatibilities and potential violences that can surely come along with disliking our current commander-in-chief.
There was the dude who was raised by a union-man father and who touts himself a Leftist who sees Trump as the ultimate manifestation of the ills of capitalism, yet immediately took the Avital Ronell case to mean that feminists were guilty of the same double standards in cases of sexual assault and misconduct as your average dude-bro.
There was the student of mine who said that he “loves everybody regardless of skin color†and didn’t support Trump, not because of, as I almost hoped, a commitment to anti-racism. Instead—and get this—he didn’t support Trump in part because during the campaign season he felt Trump should not have tried to target Black community leaders since this only, to my student’s mind, maintained the racial divide.
There was the woman standing behind me in line who made clear that she “doesn’t support Trump at all†then proceeded to defend Kavanaugh’s nomination on the grounds that no one should be held accountable for “something†(you mean rape and sexual assault, sis?) they did forty years ago. All of this is buttressed by Trump disdain, which they all think means that they are thoroughly, adequately on the right side of the contemporary history being made—or, as this generation has come to term it, though I am growing so, so tired of the word’s presumption and finality: adequately woke.
Such sentiments have crept up imperceptibly, at least to me. Why is it that mere denunciation of a public figure, without evidence of putting in the gritty work required, leads one to be revered as sufficiently progressive? It might, perhaps among other things, have arisen from a belief that incarnating an idea of evil into a prominent figure gives one an easy avenue into a kind of political piety. One need only to point a finger at evil, an evil that’s right there on your TV screens. Now, by definition, one is not evil, not ignorant of the terrors in our midst, not responsible for the things done in evil’s name—one, by definition, is the wokest person alive. Round of applause.
None of this, though, is enough because—and I mean this—I don’t give a fuck how much you dislike Trump if your politics aren’t putting in work to dismantle the current oppressive regime that extends far beyond, and has been present long before, Mr. President.
What is more necessary at this time, I would assert, is not to think that declaring our like or dislike of a politician is enough (or that Party politics will ever save us). We must, instead, commit to eradicating the things done by the despised: anti-Blackness, transantagonism, queerphobia, cishet supremacy, xenophobia, ableism, and all the terrors propounded by, or rather misguidedly believed to be isolated to, the current president.
My disdain for the implicit “I hate Trump and therefore I am sufficiently progressive†is how almost always this is leveraged to absolve the, again, often white, often purportedly liberal person from doing the work. Professing how much you despise a particular political figurehead, to me, says little about how you position yourself in relation to the system that figurehead upholds. Additionally, it says little about how you are mobilizing yourself in subversion of not only that figurehead or even the specific system(s) that figurehead supports, but more capaciously in subversion of the very tenets of the world that has enabled that figurehead to emerge onto the scene.
“I hate Trump†is about enough to tell me only that you have the capacity to contort your vocal cords into a refrain that, currently, has a little clout in some circles. The chant of Trump-hating, when it ends there, amounts to little more than sleep-talking, mumbling indecipherably while you still—on the spectrum from apolitical to conservative to moderate to neoliberal—amble around in a dream world where you think you’re putting in substantive work. You are not, trust me.
Interestingly, this sentiment comes from folks often timid to use language that accurately describes Trump. They go so far as to say that he is “awful,†“offensive,†maybe even bigoted. And that is the outermost edge of their castigation, never using the language—the precise, trenchant language—of white supremacist, transantagonist, ablest, xenophobic, a sexual assailant, queerphobic. If they cannot name these very specific things, which is to say that they cannot conceptualize these very specific things as characteristic of Trump, what, I ask, is it that you hate?
The imprecision in language wielded at Trump has the added effect of foregrounding hatred of him at any cost as the only ethical response, even if that language has the effect of harming other marginalized people. What I mean is that commentary of Trump as “fat,†“ugly,†and lacking in phallic endowment, for example, is used to demonstrate how visceral one’s hatred is without acknowledging that denigrating one’s “fatness†or “ugliness†is itself a problematic position to hold. It slanders people of size and those whose bodies do not conform to normative standards of aesthetic beauty. You are not off the hook for your fatphobia or dick-thing (á la bell hooks) obsessions simply because it is hurled at 45.
Placing their hatred on a pedestal of sufficient politics in fact disallows people from actually examining the mechanisms through which he operates, and importantly the mechanisms that enabled his presidency. In other words, they don’t have to know what it is they hate about him, they just hate him, which is enough for them. And that amounts to being woefully inept at going any further than “Well, I just hate Trump.â€
It is enervating to say the least. It is symptomatic of a tendency for many to believe that declarations of “I am…†or proclaiming like or dislike of someone is enough, indeed, is all that one can or should do. No. The much more difficult work—and the much more substantive work—is putting in the labor of cultivating freedom. Though I have grown unimpressed by the term and those who deploy it, to be “woke†is not a state that one suddenly finds themselves in; it is an ongoing process of radicalization that commits to the liberation of Black, queer, trans, femme, disabled, and poor folks. It is hard work, a “constant struggle†as Angela Davis and her Black abolitionist feminism demands, and that hard working struggle will not be realized in declaration of hatred for a singular, albeit prominent, entity.
It will be realized in naming, with cutting precision, the terrors that pervade the social world; it will be realized in putting our bodies, minds, pens (or, keyboards), artistic gifts, professions, and love on the line; it will be realized in our commitment to doing, over and over, the necessary radical work that we must do.
Suggested Readings:Â
“White Women, Come Get Your People,” Alexis Grenell, NYTimes, 2018
“Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on the Urgency of Fighting Against the Racist Right-Wing,” Gail Ablow, billmoyers, 2017
“#Takeaknee exposes how liberal hatred of Trump is used to obscure anti-Black violence,” Leslie Afua, RaceBaitR, 2017
Marquis Bey is an English PhD candidate at Cornell University, a Ford Foundation Fellow, and author of Them Goon Rules: Fugitive Essays on Radical Black Feminism (U of Arizona Press, 2019). He writes on Blackness, Black feminism, and trans subjectivity.
