Photo credit: ABC News
The events that took place in Charlottesville will forever be seared in our minds. The culmination of white fear and fragility was reduced to acts of tribalism, barbarism and domestic terrorism. The alt-Right’s false premise of freedom of speech and peaceful protest discounted legal precedent holding that these fundamental rights are not without limitations nor are they meant to incite violence or cause imminent harm or severe emotional distress. The “Fighting Words” doctrine has been defined by courts as speech that “tend[s] to incite an immediate breach of the peace” by provoking a fight, so long as it is a “personally abusive [word] which, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, is, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke a violent reaction”. (See, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315U.S. 568 (1942)). Here, spewed racial epithets and religious and sexual animus coupled with lit torches engendered visceral apprehensions of historical lynchings and cross burnings, incited fear and provocation, and fell out of bounds from a constitutional standpoint.
Further, the nation was again gripped with the anxious reality of the moral bankruptcy that exists at the helm of U.S. leadership. But this time it was different. Our commander-in-chief, under color of law, asserted without equivocation, the place of white nationalism and fascism in this country while wrongly denouncing those who bravely stood in the face of prejudice. Trump’s prior vacillation in the last few days, presenting as moral ambiguity at best, was firmly replaced by the true heart of the man: A man who at the official podium revered the contemporary cultural significance of confederate secessionist Robert E. Lee. A man who refused to call out terrorism despite the fact that an Isis-style vehicular attack by a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi resulted in the demise of a young demonstrator who championed equality. A man who today supports those who have replaced the white hood with a red cap, appealing to the most demonic facets of society.
August 15, 2017, ironically the deadline the world assumed would trigger a Korean nuclear response, had more historical consequence in the United States. Unfortunately, the President’s stance during his press conference this day marks the line of demarcation. The administration has given breath to the extreme right, who illegally formed a militia, wore riot gear, menaced antiprotesters while brandishing armament, shouted slurs to incite violence, carried torches to invoke fear, and caused the murder of innocent Americans.
So where do we go from here? What is apparent from the images depicted over the last weekend is that this race war is won standing in unity, a painful and difficult truth for some. Whites and non-whites must collectively ensure the sheer numbers and voices needed to combat this adversary. Those who actively oppress others based on superficialities such as color, religion, creed, gender or sexual orientation can no longer be discerned from those who flirt with hate groups or from those who vote for and lend support to racists or the racist-adjacent. Passivity or silent complicity in a system of white privilege no longer exempts one from being a racist.
Moreover, revenge or political fights are useless, temporary and appeal to the ego and lower-based frequencies of ourselves. Rather, business leaders and congresspersons should be held to account for their positions in this debate and their customers and constituents should reflect this point with the dollars they spend and the votes they cast. Old fashioned canvassing in our neighborhoods and signing petitions to effectuate change in our districts does have an impact on our legislative agenda and policy amendments if enough people engage. Our imprint is directly proportional to the number of citizens who take an active role. Simply sitting back is too grave; those in the fringes of the alt-Right movement which is gaining credibility among whites and enabled by some others, inconspicuously live on our streets, teach at our schools, attend our churches, police our neighborhoods, set standards at our offices and sell us our groceries. To all thinking, reasonable adults, I say to you: This is everyone’s problem. Let us emulate the unity and peace and strength that our God has granted us and operate on the right side of history.
Matthew 6:9-13: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
God Works Always 