Black men, thank you.
Hi all black men, and black people who show up,
Some of you have definitely seen me in this sub before, but to start: I'm Josh, aka Browsing. I'm an HS senior who's 4 days away from graduating. I made a variant of this post in r/PoliticalOptimism already, but I thought I'd do so here for my Black friends. I want to be rather personal with this.
To start with, I'm 17. I wasn't able to vote in the 2024 US election and won't get a shot until 2027 at the earliest. This still bothers me every day, especially as I watch my country fall further and further into despair. I had to spend my election night in my room, watching Kamala fail to gain any ground against Trump and end her campaign in a blowout. It took the air out of me and left me with a feeling that's only been replicated twice since then. I went to sleep confused, angry, and sad at the same time. I barely ate the next day at school and couldn't process things as easily as I normally do. My reaction was less explosive than 2016, which saw me throwing a whole ass tantrum, but it was still a bad one. People around me were disillusioned, like they didn't want to acknowledge what was happening. I struggle with autism and ADHD, so my emotional instincts can sometimes get really bad, and it's something I'll touch on even more. Some of you have seen me constantly post in this sub, just letting out all of my negative emotional thoughts in single posts.
I've been interested in politics, history, geography, and the like since at least 2019. I've spent this administration completely spiraling mentally. It's been awful putting so much pressure on myself, blaming myself for stuff that happened before I was born, overreacting to smaller things, and showing actual sickness for what Trump and his cronies have done. It's brought me a lot of physical, emotional, and mental trauma that will take a while to recover from. I used to take so many social media posts about Americans being "cattle" seriously, and it would make me feel existentially guilty for even being a citizen of this nation in the first place. I consider myself a socialist, and to hear those comments from people who are supposed to be my friends would have me questioning my existence. I would see posts from Canadians and Europeans talking about how they will never accept anything from America or Americans again, and I would sometimes cry. I would cry thinking that my entire future would be dampened by the fact that I wouldn't even get to trade or interact with the cultures around me. With the countries around me.
Despite being a socialist and a son of immigrants at that, there's been a lot of Western, "typical" stuff that's left me emotional and in total despair, like when Trump attacked Zelensky in the White House last year. Or when Kimmel was cancelled, which I posted about in this sub. I can explain why that fucked me up (I had to talk to my counselors the next day, and even then, it did not fully subside). Or when Renee Good and Alex Pretti were both shot and killed. Or when Trump implied that he would use a nuke on Iran in April, which was the only thing I could think about for the rest of the day.
I've been disturbed by systemic issues too. The abduction of Kilmar. The Callais ruling. The Virginia ruling from just last week that blocked their VOTER-APPROVED map. I knew immediately what that meant when it was released, and my heart dropped again. My mind was all over the place, between that and the news of Tennessee losing its last majority-Black district. It had felt, and still feels like, all the things we learned and all the progress we made relating to civil rights, which I had written about for an AP Exam on that day, are being wiped out with no end in sight. It's not comforting at all. And sometimes, I feel like I'm not doing enough. I try to. I've been involved in mutual aid, I've given speeches, marched, walked out, written articles, protested, etc. It sometimes still doesn't feel enough. There are times when I'll go and turn on a video game, or a sports game, or a song, or a movie, and it'll feel like I'm being lazy or a moral failure.
As an autistic person, there are also times when I'll lock into place and freeze over seeing something. I did that today. I saw something about how everything in this country is getting worse. It was about how billionaires and corporations keep running amok, how society has broken down, and about how we youth just keep being exploited over and over again. I understood what it meant, and I had actually written an essay with similar feelings, but it still froze me. I felt truly awful. I asked myself if I missed the best period of the 21st century because my parents decided to have me too late. Am I being left with the scraps because I was still learning to write in cursive for the glory? Does the world just have to be like this as I go into college? Or am I just once again acting like a villain?
Even with this, I know I have to keep trying. And a huge reason I do is because of you guys. It's so comforting to know that this sub is among many that exist, and that there is hope after all sometimes. To see Black excellence being celebrated, to notch interactions with my kind...it's just beautiful. When I get to college, I want to do better. I want to do more. I don't want to let people down and be seen as someone useless. I know some of the existential threats this regime poses, and I need to help stop it in any way.
I also want to try to get my life together. I want actual therapy for all of the issues that have plagued me throughout my lifetime. I want to stop overreacting and doomscrolling. I want to find reasonable solutions to problems. It sucks that I can only somewhat remember Obama, even with all his flaws. Trump is the longest president I've known, and that's a disgrace. I just try to remember that there's always something better out there.
Thank you.