Charlottesville In Black And White: The Color of Fear Is Red, White And Blue

On Sunday, Heather Heyer will be dead a year.

Heather is dead because there were actual Nazis in a major US city; one who had a car deciding to barrel it through a crowd of protestors–killing her and injuring those around her. The automobile battering ram has seen an uptick since the Black Lives Matter movement gathered momentum after the death of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, FL.  The modus operandi for inconvenienced white people seems to be to grab keys, get in a car and plow through a group of human beings!

This week, it has been confirmed that white nationalist Jason Kessler has been granted his permit for another Unite the Right Rally in Washington, D.C. The rally last year, held in Charlottesville, VA, was to protest the removal of a Confederate statue of Robert E. Lee. Nevermind the fact what the American South actually did 157 years ago was treasonous and to support this Confederate mindset is itself treasonous according to American history.

This initial rally featured the chant, “Jews will not replace us!” This is the same ideology which caused the deaths of at least 6 million people. The same country which grants this kind of free speech, fought the country who had leaders and advisors to indeed devise — and implement — a Final Solution. This is the same country now, Germany, that arrests people for speaking about or touting this ideology–because they are ashamed.

There is no such thing as ‘shame’ on the Right. There were no ‘good people’ on both sides of this rally last year. People were protesting because they opposed ideology which causes the death of people. The other people there? Nazis. People that believe in the supremacy of one race, the inferiority of others, hide behind laws which bend in favor the actions of those who live to see those who are not white eradicated. Yet, these are the same people the D.C.-Charlotte area chose to provide ‘safe’ accommodations for in the form of separate trains to the rally on Sunday, August 12th.

In reviewing the outcome of the Unite the Right Rally last year, the death of Heather Heyer, and the assault of Jason Kessler caught on camera, you must understand the thing which motivates this type of support and ideology. It’s not about the statute. It’s not about the morphing nature of the Confederacy (from the Klux Klux Klan to fugitive slave law policing to Jim Crow to policy and law enforcement). It is about the same thing racism strives to do to anyone that is seen as a threat and not male or white:  erasure.

Jason Kessler and those who believe as he does, do not want to be confronted by truth. They want to create their own because it suits their egos, which powers ideology and broken theories about eugenics and race. They don’t want to be confronted with what this type of thinking means and results in! Protest to those who are unwilling to see what privilege unchecked garners. Protest means there are those whom don’t support them, and being ensconced in ‘right’; such opposition does not compute.

For those brought up in an environment where they are told how much better they are than another person purely due to the lottery of skin color, equality is a myth and should remain one at all costs. Those seen as less than the intrinsic value ascribed by whiteness, those who oppose them have to be stopped! In pausing to consider what may be, what is, truth would be the start of their deprogramming. The lethal software of the myth of white supremacy would fail to upload; the download of this information to the next generation would not be complete. If that data transfer does not occur, then all is lost:  the superiority of whiteness would be lore to be forgotten.

This rally is not to benefit ‘white history’ or celebrate ‘all lives matter.’ This rally is meant to be a tumor on the body of progress. It is meant to be a kick in the ribs to the bloody history made by those whom fought and died for the betterment of this nation:  in believing this nation could honor and enforce what The Constitution dares reveal about the inalienable rights of others. This rally is to remind those who are both scared and white the world is changing at minute to minute speed. Now being white and American is no longer to remain unquestioned–it is to be questioned; it is to be examined for motives and suspected.

The aspiration and complete belief in the perfection of white supremacy and all its doctrine entails is and was proved erroneous when Congress, still predominately white and male , had to acknowledge a black man was superior to them in office for eight years. Daily, white supremacy is seen as a fool’s errand.  Yet, it to those who have nothing else other than war stories and tales from their grandparents or parents running black and brown people out of a city, or having ‘necktie parties’ and taking pictures–what more excellent thing can they do other than lust after such power? What more than they do other than find a way to perpetuate that legacy?

The police one year ago Sunday were criticized for how their response was lax at best in assuring the safety of all involved. The directors of the transit system of the D.C. Metro area were publicly shamed for trying to provide ‘safe’ travel to those who were attending this rally–when a year ago no safety was provided to those who were beaten, run over, physically threatened or assaulted and died by those with the power to shut everything down.

The nation is changing. However, racism and power are still vile, seducing bedfellows to those who have nothing to add to the world other than the delusion of their personal greatness. In this ‘greatness’, there is a need to steal or strip greatness away from others. However, I believe in the wit of Toni Morrison when she spoke of racism with this quote:

“If you can only be tall when someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem.”

I admonish the residents of Charlottesville, VA to get off their knees. They, like the nation, have a serious problem.