We live in a divided America. There's no question that the 2016 presidential election and Donald Trump's ascension to the White House revealed a stark division in the United States -- an often awkward and bitter ideological divide that impacts regular folks and family around the dinner table.
Business Insider talked to an Alabama woman named Rebecca, a Korean American adoptee who basically stopped speaking with her white, conservative Christian mother since the election of Donald Trump. In this interview, Rebecca and her mom, Mary, reunite and sit down to talk about their differences on camera.
It is not awkward at all. (No, actually, it's pretty awkward.)
Sorry, Mary, but I'm going to fall squarely on your daughter's side here. Rebecca explains that their strong political differences are not only generational, but very much attributable to that fact that she is a racial minority, and there are important aspects of her identity that her white mom is just not going to grasp.
"Some of my frustrations is that yes, I'm a minority, and so some of the things that I had to deal with growing up, my mom doesn't understand and can't understand," Rebecca says. "I mean, she doesn't have a framework to understand that." Including the many reasons why Rebecca could not conscionably support that assbag.
For Mary, it's apparently about her Christian values, and the measures that Trump purportedly promised in order to uphold "the freedom and protection of religion." She thinks he's done a "wonderful" job since taking office. By the way, Rebecca points out that her mom "literally only watches Fox News."
For Rebecca, it's about Trump's racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia (and the list goes on).
"I don't think there's a single group that wasn't attacked or marginalized or threatened in some way during this past election," Rebecca says. "As a minority, as a woman, as an immigrant, as a mother, all of those things are things that I care about very much because it does impact me directly."
The video ends with an epilogue revealing that since recording this interview, Rebecca and her mom have been talking more often. Good luck with that. May you both find the understanding, common ground and extraordinary patience this relationship demands in the era of Trump.
