As An Immigrant Woman I Now Have Tremendous Trepidation Of Staying In America

As part of a nationwide series of university student walkouts in protest of Republican President-elect Donald J. Trump’s proposed policy initiatives regarding immigration and the deportation of criminal undocumented immigrants, nearly a thousand students and faculty members at Rutgers University staged a rally and march in downtown. (Photo by Albin Lohr-Jones/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

By Felicia J. Persaud

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Nov. 18, 2016: As an immigrant woman who has lived in America for the past 20 years, the fear and trepidation I have felt throughout this election at the thought of Donald Drumph – I mean Trump – becoming President, became a harsh reality for me on Nov. 9th.

That dread was poured out on me and millions of immigrants, African-Americans, educated women, Muslims, Jews and gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender people all across this country when 29 percent of Latinos and 8 percent of Black voters decided they would support the KKK, Vladimir Putin and the majority of uneducated White men to elect a narcissistic moron as President of the United States.

I’m not going to get into the other characteristics of the new leader of the so-called Free World. I think ‘moron” sums it all up accurately.

But I’m dismayed that many Black and Latino voters – aka House slaves – were so swayed by the so called celebrity of Massa Trump and the thought of the position they could hold in the Big House, that they sold their souls to the devil and left us all with Lucifer.

Now, to quote Jamaican reggae singer Chronixx: “Here comes trouble, Here comes the danger!”

In the days since Nov. 9th, I’ve experienced a range of emotions – from disappointment, to anger, to fear, anxiety, trepidation and most of all – deep sadness. Sadness for all my immigrant brothers and sisters now worried that they will be rounded up like animals, ripped apart from their families and deported.

Sadness for the DREAMERS, whose legal status Trump says he will turn back with executive order; sadness for the young immigrant children in fear their parents could be taken away, leaving them orphaned in a place where the hate has become palpable.

Sadness for the Muslim women wearing their hijabs and being attacked by the ignorant among us who now feel empowered to display the hate they have felt all along in their dark hearts; sadness for Muslim men and Sikhs who could be attacked just because of their religion and the way they look.

Sadness for African-Americans, black Caribbean immigrants and Africans who are being heckled because of their skin color or are having racist signs posted on their businesses that their “Black Lives don’t matter and neither does their vote.”

And sadness for the LGBT couples having slurs hurled at them and feeling afraid to walk down the street holding hands.

But most of all, I feel great sadness for my own well being. I fear the racial slurs like “Black Bitch” that could be thrown at me because of my black skin or the anti-immigrant sting of words like: “Why don’t you go back where you came from?” because of the way I look.

Or worst – the likelihood of a physical attack even as I mind my own business and go about my daily life. These thoughts have raged since Wednesday Nov. 9th – should I now take up arms as is my constitutional right too?; do I need to get to a gun range now and learn how to shoot?.

This fear is not just imagined – this fear is real, because Donald Trump talked openly about doing terrible things to immigrants and blacks and Muslims and gays and women and people with disabilities. And that talk has incited the crazies among us who have always been unhinged but now are unleashed.

So where is the President-elect in all this? No real words of comfort, no strong words of warning to his supporters, no real attempt what so ever to bridge the huge divide. Nothing – except more whining on Twitter about how “unfair” it is that so many are protesting the election results and a simple: “Stop It” on 60 Minutes.

Well played Donald Drumph, well played. America is now so, so “great again” that half of its population now live in a state of fear.

The writer is CMO of Hard Beat Communications, Inc.