Anyone who knows me well know that I have a lot to say when it comes to politics, social justice, and history. My mantra has always been multicultural and intercultural, with a politically center-to-left ideology based on historical facts, but I have never used my publishing projects to voice my own views. Instead, I have provided a platform to publish poets and writers to do just that – to respond to the sociopolitical issues of our times – sharing their messages and stories through poetry, fiction or nonfiction.
But then on Saturday morning, on August 12, 2017 and to be precise, while I was typing away with “AM Joy” quietly playing in the background, I saw something I thought I’d never see again. I witnessed a situation unfolding before my very eyes. I saw white supremacists attacking clergy and nonviolent protestors. Then I witnessed the chaotic and horrifying scene of a car running over people. And then my mind flashed back to the 1960s: the murder of Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley who were bombed by four members of a Ku Klux Klan-affiliated racist group; the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner; water hoses sprayed on innocent children; the assassinations of Medgar Evers and Malcolm X; the culmination of the protests and riots of 1968; and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. To know of these incidents from the history pages is one thing, it’s another when you witness them as a young child. These are things you never quite forget that have a lasting impact on you for the rest of your life, and this is why I took time to write and post this piece.
As I watched a shaken Rev. Seth Wispelwey, a Unitarian minister and a principle organizer of the clergy meeting speak in the aftermath of this terrorist attack (let’s be clear, yes this was a terrorist attack), I was eerily reminded of another Unitarian minister, James Reeb, who was killed by white supremacists while participating in the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 on the Edmund Pettus Bridge (ironically, named after a Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan). When Joy-Ann Reid was interviewing Rev. Traci Blackmon who was abruptly plucked off camera due to the escalating violence, I was also reminded that not only Rev. Reeb was killed, the Baptist deacon, Jimmie Lee Jackson, and the Episcopal seminarian, Jonathan Daniels, were murdered during that march in 1965. When the identity of Heather D. Heyer, the young woman who was mowed down by white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. was revealed, Viola Liuzzo came to mind, who was also murdered in a car-related incident on her way back to Selma in 1965. They all died standing up for what they believed in.
While there are some similarities between the events of 1965 (also known as “Bloody Sunday“) and Charlottesville, what is striking is that back then, white supremacists hid behind masks, hoods or police badges, signifying a sort of shame, while today’s white supremacists are out in the open, defying all secrecy. The “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville was a pride march, a belated coming-out party for an emboldened white supremacist movement in the United States.
This witnessing was surreal. Watching the video clips of white men marching with tiki torches that Friday night was almost laughable, even silly except that it was strangely reminiscent of the old scratchy black and white reels of hooded Klansmen carrying torches and burning crosses, which is no laughing matter. They did this while clergy of different denominations were peaceably assembled in a nearby church. The next day, as the violence escalated, the white supremacists brazenly and bizarrely attacked not only the clergy, but anyone else in their wake, hurting and injuring many. This terrorist attack culminated into vehicular manslaughter, including the deaths of two Virginia State Troopers from a helicopter crash. While their deaths were not directly related to this protest-riot, one cannot ignore the fact that they died in service protecting Charlottesville, and had it not been for these white supremacists, their deaths probably would have never happened.
And why did all of this started? It’s because the white supremacists were purportedly fighting over the legacy of slavery and the confederacy with the planned removal of the city’s statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Emancipation Park (previously named Lee Park). Charlottesville, like many cities in the South, still has public spaces and monuments celebrating heroes of the Confederacy — many of which weren’t erected until the 20th century, as the civil rights movement began to pick up steam and Jim Crow laws started to come under attack. In the wake of the 2015 massacre of several worshipers at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston by a white supremacist, there’s been a renewed push to remove some of these Confederate monuments and rename streets and squares honoring the Confederacy. But where those campaigns have succeeded, there’s often been a backlash from conservatives concerned about attempts to erase history, Southerners who consider the Confederacy part of their “heritage,” and outright white supremacists.
So because of the planned removal of Gen. Lee’s statute, the white supremacists felt oppressed and wanted to publicly air their grievances, even though most of them don’t even live in Charlottesville. And because they were feeling oppressed, they felt justified attacking and killing people, and then slink away from the hell and havoc they left in their wake. It was as simple as that.
But of course it’s not that simple. It is far deeper and darker than what we’ve recently witnessed. And it is more than just a lamo president that has had a lifelong penchant for white supremacists, or his inability to address racism and domestic terrorism, including his weak response to the Charlottesville tragedy, his inability to condemn the Minnesota mosque bombing, and other racial incidents. Deafening silence. It’s more than the class and race issues that are seemingly tearing this country apart; the repulsive politics of Washington, D.C.; or the greed of capitalists. It is about our inability to talk and listen to each other about race and racism. This is something we saw coming several years ago as we neared the end of the Obama presidency.
In fact, Sean Frederick Forbes and I began discussing this as early as 2014. We saw the writing on the wall, which is why in 2015 we developed the 2LP EXPLORATIONS IN DIVERSITY series, to feature personal narratives and stories about race. Our first project was to address the important question, WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE WHITE IN AMERICA? in an anthology of the same name, and published 82 people willing to do so, openly and honestly. While some people were impressed with the idea of the book, they were put off by its title, and made assumptions about the book without reading it. We contacted local organizations, churches of different denominations, anti-racist organizations, who appeared mildly interested, but when pressed to action, kind of disappeared into the sunset.
We then published THE BEIGING OF AMERICA, edited by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Sean Frederick Forbes and Tara Betts, which explores the mixed race experience that consists of 39 contributors; and BLACK LIVES HAVE ALWAYS MATTERED edited by Abiodun Oyewole about how black people feel about race today, with 79 contributors. For the most part, the left-leaning, progressive and alternative media would not touch these books with a ten-foot pole because it is an uncomfortable topic. It’s not as sexy as a Black Lives Matter or anti-fascist protest, where you can rant and rave about the establishment and be fashionably hip. Don’t get me wrong, I have a great appreciation for progressive and alternative media, but these days it manages to shy away from the tough questions because they don’t want to upset their readership, or corporate sponsors, or as I have been told, don’t wish to take on topics that do not have a local slant to it (whatever that means, I guess talking about race is not considered a local topic). It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when alternative media did just that, they covered people and challenging topics the mainstream media often ignored, but in this ambiguous century we live in where social media and serious reporting has kind of merged into capitalist pop punditry, I guess it pays to play safe.
But playing safe is what we have been doing all along, for a long time. Since the failure of Reconstruction, we’ve been running around in circles: Jim Crow. Segregation. Brown v. Board of Education. Rosa Parks. The Civil Rights Acts. The LGBT Movement. The Women’s Rights Movement. The Black Power Movement. Our success was measured by how many blacks, women and LGBT folks broke barriers; not enough to turn the whole thing around, but enough to pat ourselves on the back and ignore the rest. Meanwhile, in the background, the Southern Strategy was being developed, refined and polished, with certain politicians plotting, planning and conspiring to roll back civil rights, as well as tax, banking, real estate and voting regulations to bring us back to the Gilded Age, an era largely responsible for the Crash of 1929. They managed to accomplish much of this by using race and class as a wedge among the citizenry, destroying the middle-class in the process. And we let it happen. Imagine if we had some honest discussions about race a hundred years ago and refused to be held hostage by white supremacists back then, maybe we could have avoided some of this. Maybe, we wouldn’t be staring at images of 1965 on our televisions in 2017.
What’s different now is that while the explosion of specialized, targeted cable channels, websites, subReddits and social networks have created unprecedented opportunities for cultural cross-pollination, it has also created a way for us to wall ourselves up in some subcultural dungeon and listen endlessly to the echoes of what we already believe, even when the information is false.
You can’t solve problems unless you are willing to talk openly and honestly. One of the most important things I’ve learned from the 2LP EXPLORATIONS IN DIVERSITY series is that not only is race and racism complicated, it affects everyone, not just the oppressed but to a certain degree, the oppressors. To be sure, discussions on race and racism is messy, but while some people (both black and white) have stepped up to the challenge, there is not nearly enough people willing to truly learn and engage.
I am sadden by Charlottesville, but I remain hopeful. This “us vs. them” mentality doesn’t reflect the best of America, past or present. We are at a crossroads and we have got some big choices to make as a nation. Choices that will test our political and cultural character, and our ability to struggle through these dark times. In recent months, we have witnessed the citizenry coming out and coming together to speak truth to power, regardless of which “tribe” they belong to for the common good. It is because of these actions that I am inclined to believe in America’s resiliency and dynamism. So the question is, are we now ready to dive in and have those discussions? Or are we going to continue to succumb to tribalism and separatist movements that are pulling America apart?
I leave you with Heather D. Heyer’s last Facebook post:
“If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention.”
You decide.
—Gabrielle David, Publisher
