Verbal Racist Assaults

We like to consider ourselves beneficiaries of living in a metropolitan, liberal, blue bubble here in Seattle proper. But after returning home today, whilst in my building’s lift, a neighbour I’m friendly with from another floor asked if I was okay. I said not particularly since the election, and she said, “oh, you don’t like the result?” I assured her I did not. Then she told me that last night after she left work, she was verbally assaulted by a white, male, Trump supporter who called her derogatory names, including the n-word, and told her to go back to her country. She told me she wanted to respond by telling him he wouldn’t have called her those things 3 days ago but she feared responding at all would risk her physical safety so she ran away from him. She happens to be an Egyptian, naturalised American citizen, and a survivor of domestic abuse.
I can’t blame her for her fear. I’m visibly white, and am acutely aware that I benefit every single day from the privilege my complexion affords me, but my foster mum and siblings are black, my nieces and nephews are biracially white and Mexican, as are two of my sisters in law, and I happen to be a Jewish lesbian of Spanish descent. and I’m afraid for myself. I can only imagine how those who can’t pass for white Americans must be feeling right now.