I don’t think you’re racist Don.

4 years ago I was a single mom with a 3 year old, sobbing while watching my daughter sleep and watching you, Donald Trump, win the election at the same time. My heart hurt so much, like it did for over half the country. The biggest sting came the next day when your supporters showed themselves on my page. I had no idea they were there the whole time. They were hiding. Massive groups of people don't hide like that for no reason. They hid their racist views, their misogynist views, their classist views, or they hid the fact they will put all of those things aside in order for personal gain such as tax breaks for the wealthy. They hid until it was acceptable for them to show themselves. They hid until they realized "Hey, he was elected. All of these other people voted for him too. There's no reason for me to not share my views anymore".

The U.S. has a long history of racism and we (mostly) all know this. We have made slow progress to "fix" it. Part of that effort has been making racist remarks taboo. Racist remarks and slurs and even jokes weren't as acceptable as they had been before. So, people stopped being AS racist in public. They kept it to themselves and then made their remarks at home in their misdirected rants or around family and friends they knew had the same feelings. You changed that. You made it acceptable to be open about being racist and you did that in a “tremendous” way. You and your aides think you have convinced people that you are not racist. That was enough for your supporters because they now have validation that it is okay, that it's not racist, it's only telling the truth. Because they don't say they "hate" Mexicans, it's okay for them to say only criminals come from Mexico. You have made it "okay". It's not okay. It's not okay to me when my mother came here from Mexico. It's not okay to me when I grew up around my grandmother setting time aside daily for her novelas. Thing is, it should not be okay even if I knew nothing about Mexico.

I've spent a lot of time trying to analyze you the past 4 years. For a long time I could not decide if you lacked intelligence or misspelled words on Twitter for some kind of manipulative, crazy tactic. You seem like a bad guy. You say racist and misogynistic things regularly. I call you racist because that's what you are by definition but I'm going to let you in on a secret.

I don't think you're really racist.

I don't think you're racist because I've watched racist people speak. I've watched your staff speak and I've seen true hatred. I've watched your supporters speak and I've seen true hatred. Those are the people I am afraid of. The ones that are passionate about their racism. The ones who are motivated by their racism. The ones who think their families are not safe growing up around people not like them. The ones who think brown people are stealing their jobs. The ones who just plainly do not like brown and black people. You don't speak and act like they do. It's different. It's worse. You exploit racist views for your own personal gain.

So, no I don't think you're really racist. I think you're an opportunist first.

While I don’t believe you hate people of color, I do believe you don’t care about them. You have fed them to the people who do hate them and that’s just as bad.

Goodbye Don. I pray we can say hello to change now and not hello to what you’ve unleashed.