I’ve held my tongue for far too long but now I believe is the time to speak about this recent election and the ramifications it will have on the American psyche. This culture of moral outrage at opposing viewpoints will survive no longer. This is the death of the politically correct culture. This is the year that Donald J. Trump was elected after being vehemently endorsed by white supremacists and casting words of Islamophobia, xenophobia, and sexism. This is the year that America ceased being able to call itself a post-racial society. November 8th of 2016 was the day racism became visible to everyone. It ceased being a vapor in the air that clung to the skin of minorities. It was the day that racism ceased being seen as a product of the Black imagination and became apparent to everyone. I could smell the atmosphere of fear and confusion on my campus amidst the sea of brown, white and black faces.

In the early 1960s, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his nephew concerning the race relations of this great nation. It was published by The New Yorker and subsequently converted into book form. It was titled the Fire Next Time and every word animated my soul. I may not have a platform like The New Yorker or Vice but I believe in the transformative power of social media. Therefore, I entrust my truest thoughts and recollections on the recent turn of events to the Odyssey.

In 2016, Ta Nehisi Coates published Between The World and Me which received wide praise in the media and even brought Toni Morrison to compare him to James Baldwin himself. I was entering college when I read his book and it spoke to me on a subatomic level. It brought me to the brink of understanding, my blackness and I.

This article is my humble attempt to become a voice of my generation. This is my only duty as an artist -- to be a voice of concise reason in times of volatility. Therefore, I’d like to begin by saying this is my letter of resignation. From this day forward I will no longer self identify as a liberal. This letter is rooted in individuality, it is freely floating in the currents of liberalism and conservatism, of democrat and republican.

A spectre is haunting the United States of Americaㅡthe spectre of white supremacy. The spectre cannot be dissipated by a culture of political correctness or a lack of discourse. Political correctness punishes the expression of prejudiced thoughts when in actuality we must aim our criticisms at the system itself that peddles these harmful ideologies.

Numerous attempts have been made to exorcise it. There was the Civil War, fought to humanize Africans forced to be beasts of burden. And then there was the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s to let these stolen Africans take part in the spoils they’d provided for this mighty country with centuries of free labor. But for every victory there are conveyor belts of despair pumped out by a system built on the basis of White supremacy. There are trails lined with tears, charred bodies hanging from trees, and the bitter repudiation of a democratic right to vote. It is in the midst of this country's long and tense history that I write upon the election of Trump.

I used to think that everyone concerned themselves with the plight of Blacks in America. I naively thought this to be an issue at the forefront of every voter’s decision making process. I was wrong. We will never be a targeted constituency of social reform or policy change. We will always be collateral in the democratic processes of these United States of America. Our sole utility is to serve as a voting bloc by which to secure the nomination for the Republican or Democrat party but neither group cares about us.

Appeals to Blacks in this election promoted a monolithic view rather than one nuanced with acknowledgements of our different ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds. The means by which to secure my vote or appease my interests as a first generation West Indian middle class Black male are different than the methods necessary to appeal to say, a Ghanaian immigrant whose parents are doctors. Our cultural values are different, our upbringings are different. My Blackness is not their Blackness, even if I love it the same.

There has been an erasure in America. We have long forgotten and ignored the plight of the white working class. We have bloodied their ears with dialogue speaking of America’s rule by cis heterosexual white men. We have left them to starve and bitterly cling to life in the struggle against abject poverty then, scalded their backs with accusations of white privilege. White privilege exists objectively as a social fact of American life but how can we expect anyone barely surviving to process this reality. Instead, this phrase appears to them as elitist, liberal rhetoric that seeks to alienate rather than educate.

I remember the apathy I developed for the world at large this summer working two jobs and can’t begin to imagine what develops when menial labor becomes a year long and eternal existence. How can we ask these working class heroes to take their measly six hours of leisure time or less to acknowledge the privileges afforded them by virtue of their white skin? The most cunning and sinister move that America has ever made is convincing its citizens that race and class struggle aren’t synonymous. I’m here to unite the nigger and the redneck. I’m here to say that they have always suffered concurrently and will continue to until the shared history is acknowledged.

The elite in power is no longer one gender, race, or sexual orientation. This means we must acknowledge that pushing for minorities to be in power is no longer enough. The system itself perpetuates racism, in its policy. We mustn't be distracted by their pigmented skin. We must not judge them by the color of their skin but the content of their character. This should be especially evident with the recent appointment of Donald Trump who wishes to have “alt-right” members in his cabinet including Steve Bannon whilst being openly supported by outright Neo Nazis on the heels of our first Black president Barack Obama. In all likeliness these men will barely be distinguishable by deed.