Actress Kristin Davis says the presidential elections left her feeling fearful for her adopted black daughter, Gemma Rose Davis.
“I am white. I have lived in white privilege. I thought I knew before adopting my daughter that I was in white privilege, that I understood what that meant,” said Davis while speaking at The Greene Space in New York City on Monday.
Davis, who campaigned tirelessly for Hillary Clinton, said she wanted to move to the woods and learn how to shoot a gun after Donald Trump was elected president.
She said she fears the new administration will work against her now 5-year-old daughter whom she adopted in 2011.
“Until you actually have a child, which is like your heart being outside you, and that heart happens to be in a brown body, and you have people who are actively working against your child, it’s hard,” she said. “It fills me with terror.”
Davis acknowledged her fears about the immediate future might be extreme.
“It makes no sense. I’m fully aware. I’m 100 percent aware that it literally makes no sense … the fear of what is happening and how am I going to make sure that no one hurts my child, even in a subtle way, which was already a fear I had obviously, but it just became so, so heightened.”
Despite her fears Davis says she encourages her black daughter by talking to her and hanging posters of black role models such as Serena Williams on the wall.
“I have to tell her your curls are beautiful, your black skin is beautiful,” she said. “You’re beautiful. You’re powerful. You’re a goddess … because she needs to know this.”
