Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison says white Americans supported Trump's election because they feared the "collapse of white privilege."

In an essay for The New Yorker​ titled "Mourning for Whiteness," Morrison described how white America somehow felt threatened by the rise of black people, because they "hold whiteness as the unifying force" and turned to The Donald to keep that alive.  

"There are ‘people of color’ everywhere, threatening to erase this long-understood definition of America." she writes. "And what then? Another black President? A predominantly black Senate? Three black Supreme Court Justices? The threat is frightening."

She also explores the depths people will go to "restore whiteness to its former status as a marker of national identity":

Much as they may hate their behavior, and know full well how craven it is, they are willing to kill small children attending Sunday school and slaughter churchgoers who invite a white boy to pray. Embarrassing as the obvious display of cowardice must be, they are willing to set fire to churches, and to start firing in them while the members are at prayer. And, shameful as such demonstrations of weakness are, they are willing to shoot black children in the street.

Morrison says, "To keep alive the perception of white superiority, these white Americans tuck their heads under cone-shaped hats” and train “their guns on the unarmed, the innocent, the scared, on subjects who are running away, exposing their unthreatening backs to bullets."

"So scary are the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength."

Morrison accuses white Americans of electing Trump because they "embraced the shame and fear sowed" by him during the campaign:

On Election Day, how eagerly so many white voters—both the poorly educated and the well educated—embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump. The candidate whose company has been sued by the Justice Department for not renting apartments to black people. The candidate who questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, and who seemed to condone the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally. The candidate who kept black workers off the floors of his casinos. The candidate who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.

Read Morrison’s entire essay here, if you have the stomach for it.