Peaceful for Whom?

[Content Note: Hate crimes.]

I've got a new piece at Shareblue questioning for whom, exactly, this is a "peaceful transition."

Beginning in the weeks before the election, when Donald Trump began asserting the election was "rigged" — a claim he abandoned once he won the Electoral College — there was emphasis on how our democracy survives via peaceful transitions of power from one administration to the next.

But the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups and hate crimes, told NBC News that over "300 incidents of harassment or intimidation have been reported following Trump's election Tuesday night," dozens of which NBC has independently verified.

Among them are racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, homophobic, transphobic, and misogynist attacks. Many of them have been explicitly connected by the perpetrators to the election of Trump.

...The transition has not been peaceful for the marginalized people targeted by these attacks.

There is more at the link.

I really can't state this more plainly: Insisting on the narrative that this is a "peaceful transition of power" while hundreds of hate crimes are being reported across the country is dangerous and cruel erasure in service to the normalization of Trump's extremism.