There are no words to describe the pain I felt when I learned about what took place in Charlottesville, Virginia.
I don’t understand how we, as a nation, allowed for this to happen. How are we still today, in 2017, allowing white supremacists to defend Nazi beliefs?
At first, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. A white nationalist rally, blatantly declaring their racism for everyone to hear, as if it’s okay. What is this, the 1950s?
It’s shocking to me that people still approve and support these ways of thinking. Who would’ve thought that in the United States in 2017 there would be people supporting neo-Nazi beliefs. Hatred is prevalent in our society, dividing the nation in two.
People have lost their lives fighting racism for the entire course of history - in wars, in rallies, in everyday activities. Innocent lives have been lost as a result of racism and nothing has been done to stop it.
The events that took place in Charlottesville are no different. White privilege was put on display as individuals were given the opportunity to proudly display their racism with no intention of stopping.
Yet, if those people were black and there for a Black Lives Matter rally, government forces would have stepped in and stopped the rally significantly faster than this white supremacy rally. They were allowed to preach Nazi slogans far longer than acceptable. Not only was their white privilege in play, but it was on for show for everyone.
What disturbs me is the lack of appropriate response from authority figures about the rally. President Trump’s response on Twitter was nothing short of underwhelming. Instead of deliberately calling out and condemning white supremacy, he gave an open-ended comment about hatred instead.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides.”
What Trump failed to address was this was not a matter of which side did and said what. This is not a debate between Democrats and Republicans or liberals and conservatives. This is an act of racism, hatred, bigotry and white supremacy. A rally supporter drove a car into a crowd of counter-protesters - an act of terrorism. It took Trump days for him to specifically call out white supremacists and other hate groups when he should have on Saturday in the first place.
Things like this will continue to happen in this country until it is addressed. Will this just fade into the background, forgotten over time? Will it just be seen as a freak incident and just a rare case of extremists?
This is not out of the ordinary. Racism happens every single day to far too many people in this country. It sickens me to think of how racism is so normalized in our everyday activities. Just based on race are people denied equal opportunities. I cannot fathom how people can think that their race is the superior race and that everyone else does not deserve the same opportunities as them, simply based on their skin color.
White supremacy has no place in this country today. The fact that the Ku Klux Klan remains an active group with numerous chapters is absurd to me. It clearly is a group that praises inequality with racist ideals that use terrorism to achieve its goals. It is the cause of countless murders and tortures so cruel that I cannot understand how it is still a part of society in 2017.
The members of that rally might not have been wearing white hoods, but they might as well have been. They’re supporting the same racist ideals and want nothing more than for their privilege to spread across the nation.
We can’t condone the actions of those who participated in the white supremacy rally. This isn’t a new wave of racism because these ideas and beliefs have been around throughout history and have never gone away.
Heather Heyer, 32, victim of the Charlottesville rally, died after rally supporter, James Alex Fields Jr., 20, drove a car into a crowd of counter-demonstrators. She is remembered as a proud civil rights activist. Her Facebook cover photo was simple but speaks volumes to everything that happened in Charlottesville. My heart broke and tears filled my eyes when I saw what her cover photo was.
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