Do you think all Trump voters are racist?*

The short answer is no.

The long answer is more nuanced. For purposes of this discussion, I see three types of Trump voters when it comes to race: actual racists, deniers, and compromisers.

Actual Racists: Since the campaign has received enthusiastic support from the American Nazi Party, the KKK, and the alt-right (just to name some headliners), it seems obvious that there is an actual racist contingent in play. Thankfully I have not seen any indication that any of my immediate connections fall into this category.

Deniers: This is the category for people who claim that Trump either hasn’t said those racist things or simply didn’t mean them. If this is you, I would love to have a conversation with you about how you absorb, evaluate, and internalize information. (Seriously; I’m not being sarcastic.)

Compromisers: As far as I can tell, these are the people I know who voted for Trump. You recognize him for what he is, but voted for him anyway. If you said something along the lines of, “I just had to hold my nose and do it,” this is the category for you. And for me, this is the most difficult group of people to wrap my head around.

See, I know you. I’ve worked with you, worshipped with you, and lived next to (and in some cases, with) you. I’ve seen your integrity first-hand, and my observation is that you work for the good of your family, your friends, and your community. Yet somewhere in this election you found yourself doing the devil’s calculus. I believe that for most people this was subconscious: you didn’t purposefully weigh healthcare reform against sexual assault, or manufacturing jobs against registration databases for Muslims. But that was the compromise you felt forced to make.

It’s as though you played a massive hand of poker and went all in on Trump. Sure, every election is a gamble of sorts. No one governs exactly as they campaign. Each of us has to throw our chips behind the bet we think has the best odds. Unfortunately, not all the chips you played were your own. Some of those chips were other people’s human rights.

Where does that leave us? There is no CTRL-Z on the election, and I’m not sure a lot of you would use it if there were. But there is something you can do. Think about any attack in the last 15 years that could be tied to Muslim perpetrators, and the series of inevitable responses:

1. Muslims are horrible people who want to destroy us!
2. Not all Muslims!
3. If it’s not all Muslims, then why aren’t the so-called good ones speaking out?

Here’s your chance to put that last response into practice. If you voted for Trump and are not, in fact, a racist, now is the perfect time to raise your voice. Speak out in opposition to the hate crimes that have been increasing drastically for the last five days. Donate to the ACLU. Volunteer at a local refugee center. And talk about it all. I’m not usually a fan of bragging, but now is the time to take a visible stand and demonstrate that you voted for Trump in spite of his racist rhetoric, not because of it.

*In this post I use the term racist as shorthand for xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, ableist, etc. Honestly, there’s no way I could write a non-clunky sentence that contained the whole list. This is me being lazy, not intentionally overlooking any marginalized groups at risk.