Abstract

Who are you to tell me what I should do? What gives you the right to order me around? How dare you call me a racist!? Many of us have heard these refrains over the course of the 2016 US Presidential campaign and since the election of Donald Trump. We try to talk to Trump supporters—family, former classmates, home-town friends, and online acquaintances—about the racism, xenophobia, sexism, transphobia, ableism, and authoritarianism that some of us have judged to be endemic to his campaign and nascent administration. We try to hold them accountable for supporting him, and, almost inevitably, we meet with responses like these.In this essay, I aim to develop an understanding of these encounters by framing them as...