Racism At The White House

Racism At The White House

D. S. Mitchell

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Those words were put to paper 240 plus years ago when the founding fathers joined together to form the United States of America, a democratic nation.

Several days ago, in Charlottesville, VA, torch carrying, chanting protesters identified variously as Neo-Nazi’s, KKK, skin heads or white supremacists, carrying AK47’s and baseball bats threatened the peacefulness of one of America’s most charming cities.

Twelve separate white supremacists groups from around the country gathered together in Charlottesville, VA last week in a stated effort to start a race war.  The particular event drawing them together last week end was the advertised removal of a commemorative statute sitting on public property celebrating Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

The Confederacy consisted of eleven Southern states which seceded from the United States in 1860 in a failed effort to protect and sustain the disgusting custom of slavery.  The south an agrarian society was “perfectly” suited to slave ownership.

The remaining states, known as the Union rejected the secession effort and a four and a half year long war tore the country apart. Affects of the social schism, war atrocities and the failed reconstruction have left an ugly scar on the face of this nation.

As severe reaction to the Confederate loss of the Civil War, a practice of “separate but equal” was instituted throughout the south, effectively separating the races in all aspects of life, whether it was using the a public bathroom, eating at a lunch counter, drinking from a water fountain, or riding a city bus.

At the height of that sad period in American history many segregationist laws were passed. Groups of Ku Klux Klan members terrorized black citizens and anyone the hooded marauders considered “friendly” to the black community.  Through violence  segregation was enforced with lynchings, cross burning and mass parades where their visibility intimidated the observers.  Laws passed in those 40-50 years after the end of the Civil War are generally referred to as “Jim Crow” legislation.

At this time, 40-50 years after the Civil War, many monuments were erected in memory of those treasonous actors in the Civil War. More intimidation, more suppression of anything but the white supremacy vision of the world.

It is difficult not to become emotional when reviewing the activities in Charottesville, VA. last weekend. Charlottesville is a college town of less than 50,000 citizens.  The University of Virginia core campus was designed by Thomas Jefferson.  His home, Monticello, is close by and tours of the home and its rebuilt slave quarters are near by.

Charlottesville because it chose to denounce the era of Jim Crow and remove Robert E. Lee from a prominent place in a city park, their city was chosen by these white supremacist losers to become the epicenter of a clash between good and evil. A place that led to the unmasking of a racist KKK, Nazi-lovin’ president of the United States.

Watching the white supremacists carrying torches through the streets angered American’s across the country.  Clashes re-played over and over on television were deeply repugnant and not a place we as a nation ever want to return to.  Nazi and Confederate sympathizers marching through the streets of “America’s most charming city” was chilling.

Many issues were at play in the Charlottesville confrontation, but the most significant issue that presented itself was, “How can a person claim to be an American while chanting Jewish epitaphs and protesting the removal of statues commemorating one of the darkest periods in American history?”

Is it possible to be an American patriot and a Nazi?

I say absolutely not. There is no way the two ideologies can share space in the same geographical space.  You can not call for the overthrow of the core American values and still call yourself a patriot.  Images of the pro-Nazi pro-Confederate protesters waving American flags, Confederate flags and Nazi emblazoned Swastika banners are mind boggling. Not one of these flags can share communal space, they are opposing ideologies.  Their histories, their principles incite warfare against one another.

Just because you remove Confederate flags from State Houses and demolish statues doesn’t mean you are ignoring history.  What it means is that we have as a society grown.  We struggle every day to leave our past and move into the future.  Now, as a society we must demand these memorials to the disgraced leaders of a treacherous rebellion be removed from public spaces.

I am not opposed to those same statues being placed in some private place, but there is no place on public property for memorials to a ideology whose core value was the dehumanization of a segment of mankind. Not only were these white supremacist slave owners willing to own and control other human beings they were willing to allow more than a half million men to die defending their twisted beliefs in that monumental war between the gray and the blue.

We recognize these events as our history, but we do not need to celebrate those times or their twisted leaders.

I say the sooner we put all of the ugliness of separateness in the rear view mirror the better off we will be.  Moving together as a country of many colors and many beliefs is what it means to be equal.

Seeing Nazi flags parading down American streets is disgusting.  I am old enough to remember my Dad and my uncles talking about “the war” and their hatred for Hitler and all the symbols of Nazism. The swastika flag is a symbol of a country that declared war on the United States, a military that was responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of  American soldiers and millions of others world wide.

The chaos surrounding the Trump administration has been extreme.  Things really went awry when the President decided that the Nazi demonstrators and the anti-Nazi protestors were both equally responsible for the death and injuries resulting from the clash of the two groups.

This complete failure of moral leadership by Donald Trump is not surprising. Trump has been a life long racist. No president, no man of moral conscience could argue that there are “many fine people” on both sides.

Such discussion by Trump has ignited a firestorm of controversy and many are demanding the Congress censure the president for his statements regarding the violence in Charlottesville.  It is agreed by nearly everyone, that when the president of the United States supports the idea that pro and anti protesters are of equal legitimacy they then are elevated to equal status by his discussion of them in such terms.  Nazi’s and the KKK, have been  elevated from the extreme fringe of society to a show of acceptance by a bigoted president.

The push back against Trump and the white extremist fringe was immediate with demands for Trump to clean house. The known alt-right crowd and Nazi sympathizers have targets on their backs.  People like Steve Bannon, Steven Miller and Sebastian Gorka have ignited the left against the White separatists in the White House.

What next? After Bannon, or Miller or Gorka?  We still have Trump, the most rotten of them all.

Calamity Politics is a progressive political blog arguing for equality for all and legislation that guarantees that end.

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