Students of color at Pitt concerned about next four years of politics and rhetoric

As Americans prepare for Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, students of color at Pitt say they are concerned about the future of policy and rhetoric in the U.S. 

Trump has promised to deport millions of illegal immigrants on day one of his presidency, cut the Department of Education and eliminate DEI policies. Students of color are disproportionately reliant on federal funding for college, and student financial aid is controlled by the Department of Education. 

Christopher Norris Silva, a senior political science and Chinese major, said he expects hateful rhetoric more than policy to directly affect his life in the coming years.

“[Trump] emboldens a lot of racist hate speech. For me, it’s a matter of a ‘go back to where you came from’ sort of idea,” Silva said. “Because if the president can say it, then you can say it.”

For Silva, who’s also the community engagement coordinator of the Latinx Student Association, the topic of citizenship and immigration rights hits close to home.

“I was in a bit of a panic in a sense because I have family that might be affected by this. They might be deported,” Silva said. “I have family who are not citizens — folks who have been here for 20 years, mind you, who are not citizens.”

Yet, Silva noted that in Brazil, where much of his family comes from, there are a lot of evangelical Christians who are converted by white Americans, particularly in the “slums.” His aunt is a “hardcore evangelical Christian” who voted for Trump, so he realizes that religion plays a large role in political views.

“Among evangelical Christians, there is a very loyal voting bloc for Republicans, and they’ve proven very consistent in their ideology and have very high integrity in their beliefs in a way. I don’t agree with those beliefs, but I do admire their integrity,” Silva said.

Silva said he believes Christians voted for Trump not because “he’s super religious or because he knows something about religion,” but because “he does a good job of stoking fear for the other side — of leftist and transgender and gay rights issues.” 

Silva said, as a college student who relied heavily on Pell Grants to pursue higher education and plans on attending graduate school to become a professor, education will be a major issue for him in the next four years, especially regarding Trump’s threat to cut the Department of Education.

“The Department of Education controls Pell Grants and student loans, and by taking educators out of the fed, I think that will drastically affect folks like me,” Silva said. “Even in the first Trump administration, education wasn’t really under attack the way it is now.”

“If we want to start a genocide studies certificate, that has to go to Harrisburg, and if Harrisburg is marching to the beat of Washington’s drum, is that going to be able to get passed?” Silva said. “There’s a governor’s race here in a couple of years, and if there’s a Trump-emboldened candidate who can contest the election, then there is gonna be a challenge to see if we can get programs passed.”

Azriah Crawley, a senior political science major and executive assistant at Black Action Society, also expressed uneasiness at the thought of the president fostering a climate that condones hate speech. 

“After the Obama administration, a lot of people were not happy about having a Black president, but they weren’t able to openly voice those opinions,” Crawley said. “Donald Trump was that perfect outlet to a lot of people because he was saying out loud what other people were afraid to say … He said ‘this’ about Black people and ‘this’ about gay people, and many people agreed because it was not a thing they were able to say for the past eight years.”

Despite Crawley’s pessimism about the future political climate of the U.S., The Black Action Society worked with voter registration and mobilization, helped people get informed about candidates on the national and local level and held debate watch parties. Crawley said she felt her organization’s efforts had a direct impact on the election.

“In this previous election, we saw a lot of Black voters lean more Democratically. Less than 10 percent of Black women voted for Donald Trump and less than 20% of Black men voted for Trump,” Crawley said. “Overall, I would say we did have a pretty big impact on the amount of Black voters that came out.”

While Crawley said she hopes that the American people can “openly have these dialogues” and “openly voice [their] opinions,” she believes presidential elections are a fraction of the way the country operates.

“At the end of the day, the political landscape in our country is a lot bigger than who the president is. We have institutions that are in place the way they are for a reason, and I feel like he’s going to manipulate those institutions for the way they were intended to be used,” Crawley said. “They were intended to lift up straight white men, and that’s just what we’re going back to.”

Ivana Ortiz, senior biology student and vice president of the Puerto Rican Student Association, said she considers women’s reproductive health as one of her most important issues, voicing concern for potential abortion bans in the future.

“Obviously, it depends on the state right now, but eventually, the thought of it being forced throughout is scary,” Ortiz said. “The thought of having to go to another country instead of having to go to another state — that is really scary.” 

As a citizen who resides in Puerto Rico, Ortiz cannot vote in U.S. elections. According to the U.S. Constitution, Puerto Ricans who live on the island cannot vote, and they have one non-voting Resident Commissioner in the House of Representatives to voice their political interests. In the Insular Cases, the judiciary courts ruled that territories gained by the U.S. in the Spanish-American War “belong to, but were not a part of” the U.S. 

However, the outcome of the election highly affects Puerto Ricans.

“The policies of the president of the United States have always affected us even though we’ve never been able to vote because even though we have our own government, it’s under the U.S. government, and whatever policies are enforced throughout the U.S. will be enforced in Puerto Rico as well,” Ortiz said.

Farah Hendawy, a sophomore economics and mathematics major and co-president of the Middle Eastern and North African Student Association, questioned the integrity of the U.S. political system during this election season. She particularly noticed the negative effects of the two-party system and the weak Democratic Party on voter turnout.

“People either shifted sides or didn’t vote at all because they felt it was a moral dilemma test,” Hendawy said. “Even people who I knew were Democrats and very involved with the College Democrats — I could still see that when they would talk about Kamala, they just said things like ‘Yeah, it’s the only one we got.’ It was really just out of pessimism.”

Within MENASA and her own community, Hendawy said they felt the Israel-Gaza war was a highly important and obvious topic in the election, but they believed neither party represented those interests.

“I understand why people are not turning out to the polls because you’re being ignored in the conversation,” Hendawy said. “It’s like if abortion laws were never mentioned at all when it’s clearly an issue that everyone’s talking about right now. If you don’t mention abortion laws or anything about reproductive care, then what’s the point?”

Hendawy expressed her admiration for state and local representatives who addressed the war in Gaza and said in order for political change to happen in presidential elections, candidates have to be more “explicit” going forward.

“You don’t represent the people by being against the other side,” Hendawy said. “Trump’s the president now, and they can now use this as a base for their argument, but they’re gonna have to do more than that if they want to win in the coming years.”