One of the most pernicious effects of a bully’s intimidation is making victims afraid of being true to themselves, because it’s the essential and authentic parts of them that incite the bully’s contempt.
During his first week in office Donald Trump issued a blitzkrieg of executive orders. Among them, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity and Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” According to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, among the things these orders direct the administration’s agencies and staff to do are:
“Terminate diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, positions, and programs in the federal government; terminate equity-related grants and contracts; and repeal prior executive orders designed to ensure equal opportunity in the workplace, including a decades-old executive order from the Johnson Administration ... ”
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Arleene Correa Valencia, a formerly undocumented artist living in Napa, California, understands this dread. “There’s no handbook to how to lose that fear,” she says. Valencia was an enrollee in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, and a college student during the previous Trump administration, when she was under almost constant threat of losing her scholarship and means of staying in the country legally. Even now, having achieved permanent resident status, she still worries. “I still feel like I’m very much a target, especially having come to my residency as a Dreamer. There is this feeling that I did it the wrong way.”
Less than two months after taking charge of the federal government, Trump and his agents have devised ways to not only erase certain artists and certain types of art; but also to compel these artists to erase themselves, in the name of self-protection. This is exactly the opposite of their most essential work: to engage the public to experience their work and to move them toward transformation. What is a possible solution? Valencia turns toward her art. She says:
“My practice has changed in that now I’m more grounded in knowing that my people have this beautiful language of painting. And with that I also, tattooed my head to recognize, my Indigenous background and my connection to Mexico. This is the time where we have to make our markings known, not just on our bodies, but in our work, marks that are true to ourselves.”
Indeed, it’s crucial to refuse the option of doing violence to oneself by denying those very aspects of the self targeted in the culture war being waged by this administration. To maintain who you are can be its own kind of victory.
