“I Thought It Was Going to Be Simple, But It Wasn’t: Exploring Traumas of Trump—Civil Rights, Customs, and Colorism Through Collaborative Spirit-Writing—2026”

The performative essay, constructed through a method of collaborative spirit-writing, teases through three textual encounters: Trump’s public statement that the 1960 Civil Rights Act led to white people being very badly treated ; the experience of two Black subjects at airport security that become analogous to the surveillance of national borders, and the politics of race and the materiality of bodies in the United States. All making an argument for performative resistance against the current U.S. political climate towards better collective and collaborative futures.