“I am America,” Muhammad Ali once said. “I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me.”

He passed away as I was putting together my last magazine, and his quote so poetically addressed the question that graced our cover: Who is America?

It seemed only fitting that it was answered by The Greatest, that it withstands the years, that it reflects and confronts our nation’s history in an honest, even uncomfortable way. Because it is not an easy question.

Shortly after completing our last issue, Enrique and I spent the day celebrating in Baltimore, capping our little vacation with a walk in Federal Hill, surrounded by history and dwarfed by a towering American flag. I had been asking myself this “Who is America” question for a while, and I wanted Enrique’s insight because I knew it would be as brilliant as it was biting.

He laughed. “America is the drunk at the party,” he said. “We’re stumbling to the buffet, not trying to hurt anyone. We just want to get our spot in line, and if we knock someone out of the way by mistake, well, oh well.” I argued America was the smartest girl in high school who has to work a lot harder now that she’s in college, where the landscape is bigger and the competition more formidable. America is a racist, I said. Enrique agreed.

That’s what saddens and scares me most about the outcome of the 2016 election. In the Super Bowl of our national identity, hate seems to have won. Admittedly, there was an unappealing opponent in the status quo, in the oligarchy of big family names with big family money who seem to shuffle in and out of the White House each decade, and yes, the subversive in me can somewhat understand Drumpf’s appeal. I gravely predicted his presidency after the second debate, and Rolling Stone nailed his ascent in this brilliant article from February.

But the racism scares me. The rallies; the pushes; the shoves; the epithets; the lily white backdrop of supporters; the vitriol towards the simple acknowledgement that Black lives matter; the repudiation of the founding principles of free speech, press and religion; the endorsement of a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard; the very racist platform to discredit the country’s first African American president. It was like someone found a well of intolerance, entitlement, hostility, resentment, fear and hatred–and then drilled.

But maybe that’s who America has always been. I wonder what Muhammad Ali would think.