I'm not really sure how many more times I can do this.
Don't worry, I'm not being melodramatic.
I mean the news. Keeping up with it, reading it, getting upset over it, dealing with it, and trying to move forward only to be knocked in the face with a 2x4 yet again with the next idiotic, traitorous, and horrible banner notification from various news sources on my phone.
I'm fucking tired, y'all. Aren't you?
After the tragic events of that fateful weekend in Charlottesville, VA, I feel at my wit's end. Let me explain.
I grew up in the South, in the metro area of Atlanta. I grew up in a small town, where there were churches upon churches on every corner of every denomination. Those churches that levied their influence on the little town we lived in, even to decide what kind of play the high school theater could put on. My father was a bit racist and homophobic, and a few of my relatives growing up who were very opinionated about anyone different from them. I'm no stranger to hearing others judge and criticize, masking their subtle racism with "But I have black friends..." and "I'm not racist but..."
As a native of metro Atlanta, I spent summers watching the laser show on old comforters on the lawn, eating KFC and Dippin Dots, while the fantastical light display played out on Stone Mountain's Confederate carving. I can still hear those rednecks with their whoops and hollers when the lasers depict the surrender of General Robert E. Lee while Willie Nelson played in the background, before Lee Greenwood's Proud to be an American began to play. As a child, I saw 'Dixie Flags' and heard 'It's heritage, not hatred' more than a few times. As a teenager, I remember when it was cool to wear Dixie Outfitters with your cowboy boots from Horsetown East, shirts with what appeared to be harmless displays of Southern pride in the shape of Confederate flag bandannas on golden retriever puppies and such. We have streets, roads, bridges, memorials, schools, and monuments devoted to the mythology of the Lost Cause of the Boys in Grey.
If you live in the South, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Symbols of the Master are all over, a false idol to an idiotic belief system.
So it doesn't surprise me that a group of Neo-Nazis, Alt-Righters, White Supremacists, and members of the Klan descended upon Charlottesville, VA this past weekend because one of their precious statues were threatened. In reality, Christopher Cantwell and Jason Kessler, among various others who ascribe themselves to the morals of the KKK, paraded into a Southern town with tiki torches, bats, and shields, and protested, to "unite the right" and take back America. They were wearing white power shirts, chanting 'Blood and Soil' and 'White Lives Matter', and were performing Nazi salutes.
It doesn't surprise me, but I have some news for you all.
This goes for you too, you who defend white cops who kill black Americans, you who utter the words "All Lives Matter" at a BLM protest, and you who hide behind your keyboards criticizing and denouncing all who are different from you:
There is no America that belongs to strictly white Americans. There never has been and there never will be. Our country has been built on the backs of slaves and immigrants. Our country was created on the basis of religious persecution and the genocide of Native Americans. For the massive amount of prejudice, racism, and hatred our country has perpetuated, I want to apologize to every immigrant, black American, and Native American who has ever been hurt by those of us with paler skin.
And another thing, the Confederate army went to war during the Civil War to maintain their way of living. That way of living was a booming economy of slavery, not state's rights. Understand history and come to realize that holding a Confederate flag is in absolute violation of the United States and what it stands for. Confederate monuments and artifacts belong in a museum and in history books, not outside courthouses that stand for justice and equality.
I am so tired of the white-washing of history that is happening in this country. The parents in Tennessee who want to remove learning about Islam in school because of radical terrorists. The Texas schoolboard who calls slaves immigrants and wanted to airbrush history with a wide white brush by removing civil right's leaders. And I sure am sick and tired of the white people who think America is some heathen shithole because my community can get married and black Americans deserve the same equal respect as anyone.
The dehumanization that is happening in this country is alarming. The outright hatred that others believe is acceptable to now flex because we have an imbecile in office who couldn't even properly condemn the violence that occurred that weekend in a timely fashion because he benefits off the David Dukes of this country. How much more do we need for this country to wake up?
To my fellow white friends: It's time to step away from the keyboard and step outside of the house. Start protesting. Start standing up to the racists and the bigots and the people who continue to perpetuate hate in this country. Stand beside your friends at a Black Lives Matter event.
The world is changing and you have to change with it. We are a multicultural melting pot of diversity and equality for all, and it's time to get onboard with that.
To all my black friends: Whatever I can do myself to show my support as your ally and friend that I am not already doing, I would love to do it. I know I have privilege because of the color of my skin and I hate that I am afforded certain rights due simply to the lack of melanin in my outer layers.
This country is so broken, the pieces fractured and split across party lines, voting districts, and county limits. I was so afraid in November post-election of this kind of environment seeping into our country like a pandemic in the dead of night.
There's been a lot we have been able to criticize, make jokes out of, and try to dismiss, holding onto the hope that impeachment or something else would break us all from the bonds of this punishment. I'm about done with the jokes, and I'm ready for this country to be what it should be.
Aren't you?
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