Chiraag's Musings

I've seen a lot of posts going around about what a Trump presidency might mean for them and I wanted to jump in a bit. This is going to be a fairly long post, but I feel I need to just kind of get this out there. I've mostly been posting sarcastic stuff or exaggerated stuff about Trump's victory. But I wanted to honestly discuss what the results of this election tell me.

The one silver lining is that Clinton won the popular vote. So yes, she won the popular vote and lost the electoral vote.

I would like to think that I and people like me (people with brown skin) are welcome in this country. But with the election of Trump, I'm not so sure. Pretty much half the country seems to endorse the rhetoric that “Muslims” (read: people with brown and black skin) should be placed under increased surveillance in this country. Pretty much half the country seems to endorse the rhetoric that “Muslims” should not be trusted. Of course my friends all know me as an atheist Hindu, but would a cop on the street be able to tell that? Would a random person on the street be able to tell that? If I were not already in my PhD program, I would very likely consider moving to a different country — Canada, most likely. I know many people say this as an election joke, but given what this country has stated about me and people who look like me? I would very much like to act on that right now.

There are many arguments against free trade deals that we've seen.

One of the most popular is that they bleed jobs from here and ship them overseas. While that is somewhat true, as has been pointed out many times, automation is a much bigger factor in the loss of many manufacturing jobs, both here and abroad. Another one applies specifically to the TPP and concerns privacy rights, IP rights, and letting corporations usurp government regulations by challenging them in a “court”.

But I want to address today another objection, one that I haven't seen much. One of the standard arguments for free trade deals is that they will “create jobs”, if not here, then at least in other countries. They will help them “develop”, they say. They will “lift people out of poverty”. They will help them make use of their resources and labor.

It may not look like it, but it's a rehashing of the same old tired argument that white people (or countries and companies run by white people) will come in to “save” the poor savages and help them “develop”. When you say that these multinational corporations will bring jobs and bring technology, it implies that the native people are not able to do it on their own. It implies that they're not able to actually make anything, that they need guidance from the generous white people.