The U.S. continues to come apart in the wake of a divisive election

The U.S. continues to come apart in the wake of a divisive election

- Kari Vick

THERE WAS PROBABLY NO WAY THE insurgent campaign that propelled Donald Trump to his upset victory was simply going to stop the day after the election. It had too big a head of steam. But instead of morphing into a cable channel after a loss, as many observers expected, it has careened into the postelection space where, by tradition and necessity, healing usually occurs. The passions Trump stoked as a candidate have only increased since his election, impelling chants of “Not my President!” in cities across the country, a surge in reported hate crimes, profound fear among the people the candidate vowed to expel from the country and, not least, the mainstreaming of white nationalists.

Every bombshell releases shock waves, even the political kind. But here’s a question worth considering: When was the last time a presidential vote sent an eighth-grader off to school with a fluttery stomach? “Will we be deported?” Teofila Silverio’s son Alessandro asked her after the election. The answer, for them, was no. Born in Mexico, Silverio has papers. But that’s not true of everyone in Manhattan’s Inwood neighborhood or across a diverse nation where the reaction to the Trump victory was not noisy protests but stunned, funereal silence. “It was such a heavy air,” says waitress Jazmin Colon, born in New York to Puerto Rican parents. “They’re traumatized.”