#ImWithHer

When I was in elementary school, I made friends with an older woman in my neighborhood. Pat had a cute little dog named Goochie, her house was full of curiosities that any young child would marvel at, she would happily give you one of the amazing-smelling roses from her garden, she had the most curious mole on her face that I couldn't help but look at, and she was always friendly and accepting. My family would invite Pat over to Sunday dinner and occasionally she would invite my very large family over to her house for dinner.

One time, when we arrived at Pat’s house, she had the television on. Hillary Clinton was speaking, and Pat said something along the lines of, "Isn't she just wonderful?" Pat occasionally did strange things, and who could blame someone getting up there in years and living alone? At the time I didn't know much about Hillary Clinton, but I watched my mom avoid the question and later heard my parents talk about the Clintons and specifically Hillary in a disparaging way, so naturally I thought Pat's opinion of Hillary must be one of her quirks that was forgivable due to her age.

From people I was surrounded by, I learned that Hillary couldn’t do anything right—I even remember hearing her being criticized for getting expensive haircuts, which most of us would probably do if we had the means and our looks were being critiqued by the world.

It took about 20 years for me to re-evaluate the belief that Hillary was a horrible person. Today, #ImWithHer.

In the past few years as much of my life has circled around my professional life, I have learned a lot about gender bias. I’ve learned that women are often expected to balance on a very thin fence and it’s often impossible to please people—women either have too much makeup, or not enough. They either are not involved enough or too bossy. They either smile too much or too little. These opinions do not just come from men; we've all learned to look at women this way and it takes effort and dedication to look past what we've learned. It's hard for women to completely win at whatever they do.

I’ve seen all the same bias at play with Hillary—her voice is shrill, her voice is too manly, she’s not loving enough, she’s a woman and women are too emotional. She’s been criticized for her husband’s choices and her outfits. Media focus has been more on her past mistakes and where she as a person falls short than on where she stands now. Through it all, she has remained unwaveringly confident. I wish I could have poise like that.

Honestly, I've mostly looked at politics as annoying and to be avoided as much as possible. I think it says something that someone like me has been seriously affected by the hatred and selfishness spewed by Trump in the current election.

I’ve cried when hearing that people I know are supporting Trump—not because they’re not supporting Hillary Clinton, but because I hear "Like Trump, I don't respect you or any woman and I am not willing to show love and understanding to people who are different from me."

A lot of people have had trauma re-surface because of Trump and it’s terrifying to think his hatred could be normalized more than it already is. I can’t even begin to tell you how emotional I’ve been this election, from the trauma of Trump, to the excitement at possibly having a woman in the office of president, to the bitter disappointment at how strong the racism, xenophobia, and sexism are in the U.S.

Although I haven’t lived in Utah for many years, this breaks my heart:





I was so proud of so many from the state I was raised in disliking Trump. What happened? Were people unable to look past their party? Do people know that Utah used to be Democrat and it's okay to vote outside of your party to thwart someone like Trump?

As far as I know, in my lifetime, Trump is the only U.S. presidential candidate who has been so openly, repeatedly, unapologetically hateful of people different than he is. I do not believe that either party is an advocate for hatred and I’m confounded as to why Donald Trump has come this far. This election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is no longer a question of political views or parties; it is a question of hating/allowing hate for or supporting your fellow humans.

I don’t believe it’s possible for any human to be a perfect leader (do you?!), and I don’t think Hillary Clinton is the exception to that. I do know that Hillary Clinton has long cared about women’s and children’s rights, that she has years of experience dealing with the most difficult situations, that she does her homework to make the best decisions she can, that she stuck it out with an unfaithful spouse (seriously, wow), and that she’s seeking to learn and be more inclusive as we all should.

Having Hillary Clinton as president would be a whole world better than an America with a hateful Trump as leader. Again, I know that Hillary Clinton isn’t perfect. But I also know that she hasn’t sexually assaulted anyone, been unapologetic and even encouraging of sexual assault, mocked people with disabilities, proudly avoided paying taxes, stereotyped minorities as rapists and criminals, stooped to endless name-calling and body-shaming, talked casually about nuking, not paid hundreds of people for their work, been hands-off about raising children and discouraged fathers from being involved, or been endorsed by the KKK.

If I felt like I had any sway and that it’s not mostly too late, I would beg: do not vote for Trump and the hatred and fear he stands for. It has been somewhat relieving to hear of family members who have decided to vote for third-party candidates in mostly Republican states, but in the end, they are essentially voting for Trump and "spoiling" the election. (See this video about voting paradoxes to learn about the spoiler effect.)

It has taken a lot for me to say this publicly online, but the more I think about it and feel upset by the awfulness of Trump, the more I feel like I have to say something or forever regret not standing up for someone I believe in and against a horror. I, like many others, have asked myself if I would have stood up against Nazis in Germany or if I would have been on the wrong side of history. Today, though I'm late, I stand with the person I believe will steer America clear of similar utter chaos and tragedy.

To anyone reading this who has been afraid to publicly support Hillary Clinton or at the very least to speak up against Trump, I encourage you to stand with me.

To anyone who has not closely examined their disgust of Hillary Clinton and needs some inspiration (even if you've already voted), let me know and I will add you to an amazingly inspiring, Hillary-supporting Facebook group that you can read about here.

At the end of today, I hope to be able to know for sure that we will finally have a tough, experienced woman as president who will set an example for generations of girls and women. I hope if Pat is watching, she'll be proud. I also hope that my ballot stub will be a treasure for years to come as I've seen happen with suffragette sashes.

I leave you with some words that resonated with me from blogger CJane:

[Hillary’s] fight feels so personal to me. She's had to fight like hell and she's still standing--and that's important to me because I've never seen it done before. And I need to see it done. What will we gain from a nation full of women who fight and stay strong and don't give up until their voices are heard from the very, very top? We don't know. But I am willing to bet it's going to be radical, transformative and ultimately healing.

#ImWithHer

Some other things to check out:

• One-Day Democrat
• This inspiring video
• "The Conservative Case for Voting for Clinton"
• The awful abortion experience of this Mormon woman

Construction of Race

After my Construction of Race class today, I wanted to post a few things I've read recently:

NPR.org:

Loving Decision: 40 Years of Legal Interracial Unions

Listen Now [12 min 42 sec] add to playlist

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Richard and Mildred Loving gave their name to the landmark Supreme Court ruling that struck down anti-miscegenation laws in more than a dozen states. Bettmann/Corbis

Follow a timeline of the Lovings' legal battle

Lindsay Mangum, NPR

The Movies and 'Loving'

• June 15, 2007
  'Dinner' and a Show: Race, Romance in Pop Culture

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Grey Villet

Richard Loving poses with his son, Donald, in 1965. Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

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Melissa Gray, NPR

Bernard Cohen and Michele Norris examine a scrapbook of newspaper clippings about the case. Cohen, now retired, was one of two lawyers who argued the Loving case before the Supreme Court.

• Listen: Attorney Bernard Cohen Argues the Lovings' Case Before the Supreme Court
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Melissa Gray. NPR

The Lovings made front-page news around the country and were featured in magazines such as Newsweek and Life.

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Courtesy of Anna Blazer

Bryan Walker, Anna Blazer and their two children, Brianna and Brandon, live just miles from the Caroline County courthouse. They have endured sneers, taunts and even violence from strangers.

All Things Considered, June 11, 2007 · This week marks the 40th anniversary of a seminal moment in the civil rights movement: the legalization of interracial marriage. But the couple at the heart of the landmark Supreme Court case of Loving v. Virginia never intended to be in the spotlight.
On June 12, 1967, the nation's highest court voted unanimously to overturn the conviction of Richard and Mildred Loving, a young interracial couple from rural Caroline County, Va.
That decision struck down the anti-miscegenation laws — written to prevent the mixing of the races — that were on the books at the time in more than a dozen states, including Virginia.
'They Just Were in Love'
Richard Loving was white; his wife, Mildred, was black. In 1958, they went to Washington, D.C. — where interracial marriage was legal — to get married. But when they returned home, they were arrested, jailed and banished from the state for 25 years for violating the state's Racial Integrity Act.
To avoid jail, the Lovings agreed to leave Virginia and relocate to Washington.
For five years, the Lovings lived in Washington, where Richard worked as a bricklayer. The couple had three children. Yet they longed to return home to their family and friends in Caroline County.
That's when the couple contacted Bernard Cohen, a young attorney who was volunteering at the ACLU. They requested that Cohen ask the Caroline County judge to reconsider his decision.
"They were very simple people, who were not interested in winning any civil rights principle," Cohen, now retired, tells Michele Norris.
"They just were in love with one another and wanted the right to live together as husband and wife in Virginia, without any interference from officialdom. When I told Richard that this case was, in all likelihood, going to go to the Supreme Court of the United States, he became wide-eyed and his jaw dropped," Cohen recalls.
Road to the High Court
Cohen and another lawyer challenged the Lovings' conviction, but the original judge in the case upheld his decision. Judge Leon Bazile wrote: "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. ... The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."
As Cohen predicted, the case moved all the way up to the Supreme Court, where the young ACLU attorney made a vivid and personal argument:

"The Lovings have the right to go to sleep at night knowing that if should they not wake in the morning, their children would have the right to inherit from them. They have the right to be secure in knowing that, if they go to sleep and do not wake in the morning, that one of them, a survivor of them, has the right to Social Security benefits. All of these are denied to them, and they will not be denied to them if the whole anti-miscegenistic scheme of Virginia... [is] found unconstitutional."

After the ruling — now known as the "Loving Decision" — the family, which had already quietly moved back to Virginia, finally returned home to Caroline County.
But their time together was cut short: Richard Loving died in a car crash in 1975. Mildred Loving, who never remarried, still lives in Caroline County in the house that Richard built. She politely refuses to give interviews.
Interracial Couples Today
Since that ruling 40 years ago, interracial marriage has become more common, but remains relatively rare. Sociologists estimate that 7 percent of the nation's 59 million marriages are mixed-race couplings.
And even now, interracial marriage remains a source of quiet debate over questions of identity, assimilation and acceptance.
Take Anna Blazer and Bryan Walker, for instance. The white woman and her black husband, with their two young children, live just miles from the Caroline County courthouse. Donald Loving, a grandson of Richard and Mildred Loving, introduced the couple when they were teenagers.
Blazer, now 23, says her family was initially wary of her then-boyfriend because of his race.
"My mom was a little weird with it, because he used to wear this really long — they call it bling-bling — he used to wear a bling-bling cross around his neck and baggy pants. And I don't know, she just kind of looked at him kind of funny when she first met him," Blazer remembers.
But over the years her mother has warmed to Walker, 21.
Blazer says that although many things have changed since the days of anti-miscegenation laws, life is still difficult for them in Caroline County. The couple endures sneers, sideways glances and more from strangers.
"Just a couple of months ago... Bryan got beat up in the Wal-Mart parking lot because he was with me and my sister, and these white men came up to him and they were yelling. The guy ripped off his shirt. He had racial slurs all over him...and they just started going at it," Blazer says.
"I think my life would be a whole lot easier if I was with a white man. And Bryan feels the same way, but he loves me. He really does. And we are meant to be together," Blazer says.

AND

http://mormontimes.com/WC_aroundChurch.php?id=1039
Ex-Black Panther Finds Strength in Gospel Path
By Robert Walsh
MormonTimes.com
Published: Tuesday, May. 6, 2008
Editor's note: Noting the 30th anniversary of the 1978 priesthood revelation, this is the second in a series of profiles on black Mormons and their families. Next week: Tony Parker, president of the Atlanta Georgia Stake.

For Ronald McClain, interest in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was a gradual process.

He recalls that as a law student at University of California-Davis, a female law student caught his eye. As they became friends, he learned that she was a member of the church. He and Deena Peterson eventually married in 1982.

Although his wife was not active in the church when they married, that soon changed.

"We started going to church together, and we looked at the church as a way to help raise our family," McClain said in a recent telephone interview from Oakland, Calif., where he is a member of the 1st Ward.

"She didn't urge me to join, but I saw how the church was part of her life. I learned about her family and her home ward."

He says her father was especially kind to him. "He welcomed me and made me part of the family. When the elders approached me, I already had a receptive attitude. I thought, 'I sure can see a lot of good things that can come out of it.' "

McClain was baptized in 1986, and he and his wife have been active ever since.

Now working in his own law practice, he is also a sealer in the Oakland Temple and community relations specialist for the church's Bay Area public affairs — a long road from his younger days as a member of the Black Panthers, a black activist political group in the 1960s and 1970s.

"It was a time of upheaval in the black community, and I was sympathetic to it," McClain said. He says the issues were important to blacks, and he was active in the Panthers and similar groups for four or five years.

But since his baptism, he has gained eternal perspectives. He and Deena, also a lawyer, are the parents of three daughters, two in their 20s and one teenager still at home. Their middle daughter, Rachel, is about to be married in the temple to a returned missionary.

"(Our daughters) have always been active, participated in youth programs and followed the path of the gospel," McClain said. "The church has been quite a blessing in our lives."

McClain was baptized after the 1978 revelation extending the priesthood to all worthy male members regardless of race, so he didn't have the experience of making that transition. But he has seen some unsettling reactions from some church members toward black Saints.

"The church is a challenge for anyone to join, a startling and dramatic change," he said. "The church is a 24-by-7 commitment."

Sometimes prejudice and bias show through, he added, because the church is made up of human beings.

"We as human beings aren't perfect," he said. "If you're facile in the workday world, you'll be the same in church. If you have difficulty in the world, you'll have the same in church.

"I've had people react ... to me as a black person, not as a fellow Saint, even in the temple. As you go different places, it just happens."

He has seen fewer of those reactions in Oakland, where there is more diversity in the population in general.

He takes comfort in President Gordon B. Hinckley's words at the priesthood session of the April 2006 general conference: "Racial strife still lifts its ugly head," President Hinckley said. "I am advised that even right here among us there is some of this. I cannot understand how it can be ... Now I am told that racial slurs and denigrating remarks are sometimes heard among us. I remind you that no man who makes disparaging remarks concerning those of another race can consider himself a true disciple of Christ. Nor can he consider himself to be in harmony with the teachings of the church of Christ."

McClain says "we have some work to do as a nation" and as a church. "You've had the (priesthood) revelation, President Hinckley has spoken. It will just take time. We need to be more Christ-like; we just need to turn to the Savior and love the gospel. We all have to perfect ourselves."

He believes black Latter-day Saints can affect the way they are perceived. Among his suggestions:

• Be proactive, not reactive.

• Serve well and fulfill callings. "As you serve, you're in a position to affect others who may be part of the problem," he said.

• Be at the table where discussions are being held.

• Really be part of the church and put your shoulder to the wheel.

• Be worthy to partake of the blessings of the church.

As more blacks are part of the church, he says, "we're all concerned with eternal salvation and any other differences should be put aside."

McClain loves his current calling as temple sealer, which he has done for almost three years.

"I really, really enjoy it," he said, especially when he is performing a sealing for a young couple starting an eternal family.