muselogo1-copy

Sadly, we still live among too many racists

Message left on a chalkboard in Charlottesville this week. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)
We must recognize that America is still a racist nation with a racist president and led by a racist Congress.
Message left on a chalkboard in Charlottesville this week. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)
On Sunday, Charlottesville remembers and tries to dishonor the messages of hate that descended on the hometown of The University of Virginia a year ago when white supremacists/racists marched and killed in the Old Dominion. They shudder at that day when a hate-filled white supremacist behind the wheel of a car that plowed into a crowd during a protest in that city and killed Heather Heyer and tainted the town with images of bigotry and signs saying “Jews will not replace us” and “our blood, our soil.” As Charlottesville tries to remember that tragic day, honor those who resisted the hate and protests, and recapture what many feel is the true spirit of the area, other feel that much more is needed. “A lot of people here were uncomfortable with what happened on Aug. 12 and said, ‘Let’s just unite and move forward,’ ” 17-year-old Zyahna Bryant, a student activist about to enter her senior year at Charlottesville High School, told The Washington Post this week. “But there hasn’t been the work to go back and reckon with white supremacy. Before we can move on and heal as a community, we have to reckon with that.” I’ve seen too much white supremacy, hate, bigotry and racism in Virginia over the years.  As an elementary school student in Farmville, where the racist Prince Edward County school board and board of supervisors closed the public schools after refusing to integrate, I saw the burning crosses of Ku Klux Klan meetings and the racial epithets uttered by young students and even some faculty members of the  private school for whites only. As a young reporter for The Roanoke Times in 1968, I covered protests of the Martin Luther King’s assassination while whites waved Confederate flags and shouted “kill the n—–s.” Today, more than half a decade later, I hear racists declare unyielding loyalty to a president who uses racism to promote his programs while he misuses the American treasury for personal profit. The racists who organized the violence and murder in Charlottesville a year ago are trying to do the same this weekend in Washington near the White House.  Opponents of the racism should overwhelm the haters in numbers. Racist organizer Jason Kessler, who hopes to repeat what happened in Charlottesville a year ago, is a friend of fellow racist Corey Stewart, the Republican candidate for one of Virginia’s two Senate seats in Congress. Yes, as young Bryant says in Charlottesville this weekend, we must “reckon with that.” But first we must recognize that America is still a racist nation with a racist president and led by a racist Congress. We must face that.  We must fight that and we must use whatever means available to drive that racism from our society now and forever.

© 2004-2021 Blue Ridge Muse

© 2021 Blue Ridge Muse