Between Despair and Hope

A single moment captured my feelings about the 2020 presidential election–the look on my sons’ faces upon hearing the news that Biden and Harris won. The relief and joy in their eyes poignantly contrasted with the despair they felt in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Later the evening of November 7, Joe Biden stated, “We have an opportunity to defeat despair.” For so many of us, despair has been the hallmark of living in the United States these past four years. Despair has been rooted in Trump and his supporters promulgating lies (e.g., “alternative facts”), and in atrocities, such as the rise of White supremacy, misogyny, violence against Black and Brown people, separation of migrant children, attacks on LGBTQ+ people, assault on disability

rights, denial of climate change, and profound loss amidst COVID-19. The attacks on human dignity have indeed left us despairing.

In this post-election, I sit somewhere between despair and hope. While awaiting the results, I reflected on the collective resistance to Trump and the efforts to secure a democratic voting process. For many of my patients, the wait was rife with fear about four more years of Trump and the consolidation of authoritarianism. They nor I were surprised by the continued support for Trump, and yet we remained hopeful. As an Indian American woman, I am moved toward hope by the vice-presidential election of Kamala Harris, and by her words, “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last, because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities.” Harris’s election is not merely symbolic. It indicates a willingness to see a Multiracial daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants as powerful. For my Indian American family, it means that we hold the possibility of being seen beyond stereotypes, as whole human beings.

As an antidote to Trump’s racism, Biden and Harris offer an alternative, one in which diversity is a strength and an imperative to engaging w