We shall overcome someday, but not now.

Now, I feel hopeless and abandoned by the people, the very system that has promised to protect me and never leave me behind.

President-elect Donald Trump's election win proves what we already knew: America is not ready to challenge the status quo and force a reckoning with its deeply rooted divisive beliefs.

Like other Americans, I have a spirit of enduring hope − a hope that one day justice will prevail and unity will silence division.

Yet, lately, that hope feels distant. Trump's win is as a painful reminder of our nation’s struggle to confront its own shortcomings. We are entrenched in ideologies that for some evoke feelings of superiority or greatness and in others cause depression, but ultimately they harm our unity as a nation.

Growing up as an impoverished and abused Black girl, who lost........

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