If you stay: are you trying to preserve the American dream? I had a long conversation with a friend recently about leaving the country. I’ve had some version of this conversation with many white trans friends over the last two years. The question is—when will you leave? And where will you go? But I don’t see myself leaving. At least not for good. I don’t feel more unsafe now than I did ten years ago when my husband and I encountered directly the violence of our current reich in the streets. But now I wonder what it says about me that I choose to stay. Have I grown too comfortable with the compromises and sacrifices required by American the terrible? Will I stay even if birthright citizenship is revoked and this one branch of Project 2025 becomes realized? This, to me, is worse than any imagined trans pogrom. There is a sense of violence still to come. And I’m unsure of my role in it. To help others flee? Provide a sanctuary? Write loudly about how whiteness demands we forget and shore up and disappear?
I worry that by staying I’m offering my tacit approval of such a regime. Even though there will always be people who can’t afford to leave, and therefore carry on a resistance out of necessity, I’m not sure their resistance will ever be my resistance. Because I could leave if I really wanted to, so then my staying is a choice. But what do I choose to stay for? I won’t—can’t—fight for the American dream, even though my ancestors benefitted from it. They came and policed its streets, traded its stocks, wrote its stories; they also challenged its inequalities and rejected its excesses. If I am their dream (and most of the time I’m pretty sure I’m not), then I have to betray and uphold their traditions in equal measure. How might we, the white children of immigrants—not of innocence—process our role in the coming conflict?