This is a think-piece.  I hope that it will inspire you to think about its subject matter. Please approach it with an open mind.

I’m going to take a moment to discuss Charlottesville, xenophobia, the political “right”, and the United the Right Rally that inspired all of this.

In the summer of 2017, I was a rising second-year graduate student at the University of Virginia.  The summer of 2017 was an eventful one for the university and the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, where it is located.  Many are aware that the “Unite the Right” rally happened on August 11-12.   Fewer are aware that there were two KKK rallies here in Charlottesville in the months leading up to it.  As with many explosive events, the Unite the Right Rally was the end of a process, not the beginning.

These rallies shaped public perception of Charlottesville, for residents and outsiders.  Even now, years later, I am asked questions that stem from those events.  What’s Charlottesville like?  How do you deal with the tiki boys? Is it safe to live in Charlottesville?  Didn’t UVA deserve to get bounced by #16 seed UMBC in the 2018 NCAA playoffs? 

In some ways, this post is me trying to clear the air about Charlottesville.  In other ways, I’m trying to organize my thoughts so that I have somewhere to point someone when they ask.  I love living here. It is also hard for me to condense those my feelings about those events into a 30-second elevator talk.

So, let’s talk about it.

Charlottesville was the perfect location for an event like this to go south.

I was born in Virginia, and have lived near it or in it for most of my life.  I love the urban and suburban areas (Tidewater, Richmond, NOVA, Charlottesville).  I find them to be quite diverse and relatively tolerant.  These regions also tend to overwhelmingly vote “blue”, for the Democratic party.  I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.  Outside of these specks of “blue”, much of the state is a sea of Republican “red”.  I see confederate flags about everywhere in this state.  There are many parts of this state that, as a black man, I don’t feel welcome or safe.   

That being said, I love living in Charlottesville.  The city itself is quite progressive. The city’s residents voted 93% Democrat in the 2018 midterm elections. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence though.  The greater Albemarle County voted 97% Democrat.  That’s probably a coincidence as well.  It is a safe place to be out, be a woman, be a person of color, or be about anyone or anything.  I always joke that the city is like a 1960s/1970s “hippie” town.  There’s lots of live music, green initiatives, healthy living, and friendly people. 

That isn’t to say that those who are Republican wouldn’t be welcome here.  I also feel like Charlottesville is very respectful of opposing beliefs and ideas.  It is this respect of free speech that led to us allowing these three rallies, after all.  We are just very anti-hate here.  We hate hatred, as paradoxical as that might be.

But it’s also not all sunshine and rainbows here.  I live in a pretty diverse enclave, but I must stress that the city is still mostly segregated by racial divides (like most of America).  I have colleagues who would describe the city in a more negative manner.  I have seen dormitory doors that were vandalized as part of a hate crime.  Richard Spencer, THE white nationalist and racist, was a UVA alum.  Jason Kessler, the organizer of the Unite the Right rally, was also a UVA alum.  We still have this weird culture of whitewashing Thomas Jefferson, the university’s founder, a rapist and racist. 

Despite these foibles, we are still very much anti-hate here.  This is how Charlottesville became a powder keg for a “Unite the Right” rally.  There’s only so much that people can take.  People can only be so tolerant.  A single protest over the removal of a statue would have been fine.  Eventually, the protests become more common and they mention the statue less. When this happens, we start questioning whether the protest is even about the statues.  This brings me to my next point.

Spoiler alert. It was never about the statues.

I’m not going to get too deep into a play-by-play analysis of the Unite the Right Rally.  I’ll encourage you to watch this video if you would like to know what happened here.  I am lucky in the sense that there are several well put together analyses available for us.  But I do want to reiterate a very important point. 

It was never about the statues.  It was more about what they represent.  The statues themselves are a manifestation of white supremacy.  They stand tall, domineering over those who view them.  It mythologizes those who fought to defend slavery. 

By the way, the Civil War was about a state’s right to own slaves.  Educate yourself if you disagree because this is a fact, not an opinion. 

Those who wanted these statues removed do not want our history erased.  They just want us to stop celebrating certain aspects of it.  These statues were not just reminders of our racist history.  They were celebrations of it.  The people who didn’t want the statues removed don’t want the celebration of that racist history to end.  Put the two together, with one side literally dressed for war, and you won’t get much talking from either side.

Speaking of “sides”.

Sure, there was hate on both sides, but let’s not make false equivalencies here.

In a vacuum, I could have possibly agreed with then President Trump’s statements on the rally for once.  It’s hard not to look at the events, see the anger and aggression, and think that there wasn’t hate on both sides.  But it’s important to think about why the anger and aggression were present. 

For one crowd, it is the idea that they are being replaced by other people.  That their heritage is being erased by the presence of that other people.  They target their hate at Jewish people and people of color, for example.  In other words, the people they are mad at cannot do anything to make that anger go away.  A black person can’t become less black.  Jewish people could renounce their religion. Let’s be honest though.  With how we tie religion to race, I doubt that would be enough.  They aren’t talking about the Jewish religion.  They are talking about what they perceive to be the Jewish race.

For the other crowd, the anger and aggression come from a different source.  It is from seeing an overt manifestation of hatred.  It is the ideology of the protest.  The protesters could stop being racist and genocidal.  They could stop falsely claiming that the American War Between the States was about anything other than slavery.  They could change their ideology.  They could accept facts instead of parroting lies and misinformation.  All we ask is that they become decent human beings. 

And this is why Donald Trump’s “hatred on both sides” and “good people on both sides” comment bothers me.  It is a false equivalency.  It is saying that hatred of xenophobia and bigotry is the same as hatred of black and Jewish people.  I need to reiterate, those on the Alt-Right could stop being racist and genocidal.  If they did, our hatred of that person would go away.  The only way to ease the Alt-Right’s hatred is for all non-White, Anglo-Saxon, Protest, Able-Bodied, Cisgendered, and/or heterosexual people to be “removed” from society.  These forms of hatred are not the same. 

And “fine people” don’t stand with the Nazis.  They don’t stand with those who call for a race war.  If there were fine people that showed up to that rally, they went home when they saw what they were a part of and reconsidered their identity.  Some of the fine people might not have even gotten in the car or on the plane. 

It is important to pay attention whenever someone tries to make a comparison.  What is being compared and are they given equal weight?  Take American politics, for example.  False equivalencies are frequently deployed.  Socialism is the same as communism (It’s not).  The Trump administration’s stance on immigration is a continuation of Obama era policies (It’s not).  Hillary Clinton’s e-mails and failure with Benghazi makes her as bad as Trump (It doesn’t). 

These things are not equal.  And next time you see something sketchy brewing in your town, remember this.  The Unite the Right rally was the end of a months-long process.  It was the final battle in a war over a “statue”.  Ultimately, it failed to “unite” the Right, but that’s not the point.  It was here this time.  It could be your hood next time. 

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