I watched the election returns alongside hundreds of Muslim American students and activists, mothers and fathers, on November 9, 2016, at the Arab American Museum Annex in Dearborn, Michigan. The crowd that came together that night overwhelmingly believed that Hillary Clinton would claim victory, as the political pundits and experts had forecast, and by doing so would put an end to the brazen Islamophobia unleashed by Donald Trump. Well, they and we were wrong, and Trump claimed Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, and one battleground state after another to win the presidency. The unexpected result of the 2016 presidential election, and the Islamophobia it endorsed, would usher in a different kind of mourning.

XREF: Connects to the broader literature on the 2016 election's psychological impact on minority communities and the rise of Islamophobia.

Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Unde…, loc. 537