On Tuesday night, when I realized that the election was effectively decided, I felt a deep despair, far beyond anything I’ve experienced, excluding personal grief. I fell briefly into fitful sleep and awoke several hours later with that odd childhood moment of confusion. Had I dreamt it, or was it real?
It was, of course, too real. I worry about our country, but the worry is especially acute when I think of children and grandchildren, my own and others. On Wednesday, I wrote this letter to parents of children in my school.
Dear Friends:
The presidential election has shaken our small community, whatever any individual’s political beliefs. For many children and adults in our school, the outcome was intimately felt. As you might imagine, many children of immigrant families, students and families of color, and our women and girls, expressed sharp disappointment and feelings of deep vulnerability.
Now, more than ever, our responsibility is to elevate our commitment to diversity and inclusion, to expand our capacities for empathy and understanding, and to work relentlessly for equity and justice for all.
I don’t write with partisan purpose. The issues facing our country are serious and should be debated with honest intellect. No person or political party can claim unique solutions to complex problems. I also don’t write to criticize the president-elect or to reiterate the many excesses and offenses that characterized the campaign. I hope that he will rise to the challenge, abandon the heat of the campaign, and work to embrace all of America.
I do write to let you know that on the difficult morning after the election we were profoundly human. Our students, in organized and informal ways, were able to express disappointment, anger and frustration. Our faculty and staff members were present to absorb and acknowledge the wide range of feelings expressed. It is also our responsibility to keep perspective and not inadvertently exacerbate the feelings that arise, especially among younger students. We learned and laughed together as usual, but with an especially powerful sense of community. In the days ahead we will maintain this balance. Calhoun will be a safe place.
Whatever your beliefs or political inclinations, the response to disappointment cannot be bitterness and the response to anger must not be equal and opposite anger. The response to frustration cannot be withdrawal. But we can’t be complacent. We will support students as they individually and collectively consider their actions and responsibilities within our diverse society. We will encourage them to practice the democratic art of disagreeing without being disagreeable.
For several hundred years, the American experience has been a long arc bending toward justice. The arc wobbles from time to time, but we are, in many ways, a more perfect union than in my childhood.
Also on Wednesday morning, my son reported his experience with my 5-year-old granddaughter, Maddie.
She, like many small children, was aware of the election and had absorbed the sense that Donald Trump is not a nice man, had said and done mean or bad things to women and was intolerant of difference. My son worried about what he might say to her.
He wrote, “With great anxiety, I tried to figure out how to explain to my 5-year-old daughter the process of democracy. How to tell her that she and her friends of color, different religions, ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations matter and have worth, regardless of what bigots say. That just because Trump was elected into office, it doesn’t mean that hatred and viciousness are OK . . .”
When she awoke later in the morning, he prepared to deliver the good parent speech. She asked, bleary eyed, “Who won, Dada?”
He replied, “Donald Trump, sweetheart.”
Before he could go on, she said, “OK, well, we don’t have to listen to him,” rolled over and went back to sleep.
America will survive. We don’t have to listen to him.
Steve Nelson lives in Sharon and New York City, where he is the head of the Calhoun School, a private school. He can be reached at steve.nelson@calhoun.org.