Interlude

It's two am. I have to work in the morning, but I'm having some trouble sleeping. Here in Richmond, in two days, whether we like it or not, we're going to play host to a rally in "support" of keeping a monument to Robert E. Lee.

The city is on edge, as a whole it seems. Local news coverage is consumed with it, and today there was a community meeting with the police department, an attempt to explain to the public what measures they were taking to attempt to insure the safety of everyone involved. It didn't seem very reassuring, as the police either don't want to divulge much or don't know much, and it seems to have had the opposite effect if setting people at ease was the intention.

A little over a month ago, Heather Heyer was murdered by a white nationalist terrorist in Charlottesville. If you're not familiar with Virginia's geography, it's about 45 minutes from Richmond. The two cities are fairly well connected. Both are college cities, so we share a fair amount of culture. Many UVA grads end up settling in Richmond, and the same of VCU grads in Charlottesville. Artists of different varieties make their way back and forth with regularity. Families are spread between the two. It's not unusual for business owners to have locations in both places. The contingent of Richmond folks who made their way to Charlottesville on August 12th to stand with the people of that city wasn't small, as these things go.

I'm sure it in no way compares to Charlottesville, but Richmond certainly felt no lack of shock following August 11th and 12th. Some of our people were on the ground, under that statue of Thomas Jefferson, as white supremacists, white nationalists and Nazis beat them with torches. Some of our people were among the 30 injured when a homicidal white nationalist drove his car into a crowd, and killed Heather Heyer.

What was called the Unite the Right Rally, had been given permit and had initially presented itself as having been about the removal of the Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville. I don't think anyone can now look at the events of those two days and think it ever actually had anything to do with those monuments, but all the same, the topic has continued to be one of rancor. As other cities remove their monuments without fanfare, Richmond couldn't ever be so lucky, as it's part of our heritage to have been the capitol of the Confederacy. Ground zero for what should have been the ultimate fight over white supremacy in the United States, but was instead a prolonged skirmish, itself really just an extended battle.

Within the last few weeks, it was announced that a group of people from Tennessee would be coming to hold a rally, to proclaim the righteousness of the Robert E. Lee monument here in Richmond, and that as the commission our city is having over it's fate, to even consider removing it is an affront to that heritage.

I know that I'm not alone to feel this is an incredibly stupid thing. Not just the rally, the defense of the veneration of white supremacy, but also and maybe more so in the timing. We've barely begun to heal from the trauma resulting from the Unite the Right rally. Some haven't fully recovered from the injuries they incurred there. The sentiment across most of the city seems to be that it's just unthinking, uncaring, somehow an affront to have decided to come here so soon after the events in Charlottesville. That only as we've begun to settle in, begun to feel some sense of normalcy, this idiocy is brought to our doorstep, and the terror that many felt as the result of being in Charlottesville, having loved ones in Charlottesville or even just knowing that something that horrifically disgusting could happen so close is awakened again. The anxiety is plain to see on social media, and in every conversation about it.

As I lay in bed, rolling all of it over in my head, attempting to find some way to make some kind of peace with it, at least enough to sleep for the night, it dawned on me that the people coming here, and in doing so now, in their disregard for the fact that Richmond, Charlottesville, Virginia and really probably even the country as a whole haven't quite healed or even begun to get over the trauma of Unite the Right, they really are guarding that heritage, and what is ultimately our heritage of white supremacy.

If it is nothing else, white supremacy is the disregard for the terror that the non-white members of our communities have lived with for much of their lives. It's something that writers, musicians, film makers, intellectuals, people of color who are also public personalities have talked about at length. There is some degree of this that is normal for them, and it's something white America has resolutely refused to acknowledge. There is no down time. There is no walking away from the fight or deciding not to engage with the source of that horror and terror if you're a person of color in the United States. It's the normal.

It's the talk black parents have with their children about being stopped by police. It's the reality of the probabilities of outcomes when people of color interact with police.

It's the question about whether or not that application, be it for a job, for acceptance to a college or an internship or much of anything at all was rejected for something other than its contents.

It's the thing that friend/coworker/relative/acquaintance said that might have been passively aggressively racist or might been nothing.

It's the constant readiness to hear that which is blatantly racist, in order to be able to react in a way that doesn't seriously offend, upset or frighten the person who said it, because they genuinely may not have known it was racist, even though people of color are not somehow new to this country, and if you've been here, so have they. In some cases, following that experience, it becomes the experience of self doubt in wondering how that depth of racism wasn't discovered some time ago.

It's knowing that being in "the wrong neighborhood" isn't safe, and not because the residents of that neighborhood are more likely to do you harm than any other, but because the chances are very good they feel very much like you might do them harm, very literally, because you are there.

All it takes to learn these things, to hear these kinds of stories repeated over and over and over again is to be interested enough to listen, and once you're interested enough in the experiences of people who aren't experiencing life in a manner almost identical to yours, it takes absolutely no time to see these are not the exceptions that make the rule.

Now, as Saturday September 16 draws closer, Richmond is beginning to experience that fundamental piece of white supremacy without which it cannot continue to exist and draw strength, that absolute lack of caring for the pain caused to someone else, to such the degree as to essentially throw that carelessness in their face. It's the absolute negation of any consideration of your existence. That's what we're all feeling really. What we're essentially being told is that nothing about us matters. What matters is what the "New Confederate States of America" wants is what matters, and it matters right now, whether we like it or not, whether we're ready for it or not, it doesn't matter. It's their thing that matters, not our community, not our city, not even our own right to self governance (supposedly a conservative principle). None of that matters. It's what they want that matters.

White supremacy can't exist without that. With it, it has existed now for centuries, and even those Richmond residents that are staunch supporters of making sure the monuments never leave their places in our public space are feeling that sting. Our most vocal local monument supporters have all thrown up their hands and disavowed these people. Still, they're coming.

Maybe it is now, with this, a spark of hope can be found as all of Richmond, especially the white people of Richmond, who haven't spent their lives dealing with this kind of erasure of our existence, can begin to get even the slightest glimpse of what comes for us all if we don't start to get very, determinedly serious about putting an end to white supremacy's strangle hold on our society. Be very clear in your understanding, we are not currently on a forward march. We are very much in retreat where white supremacy is concerned. We have a white supremacist in the White House (we may really want to look into changing that name soon), a growing movement of militant white supremacists across all income brackets (despite the lullaby we love to tell ourselves that it's just "white trash") and none of our institutions seems very capable of dealing with this. You may be white, but understand without equivocation, if you are not one of them, even if you don't speak up, even if you don't attempt to put a stop to it, this erasure you're feeling now is the absolute best you can hope for if it isn't beaten back. Doing and saying nothing may gain you some sense of security in physical well being, but that erasure is the real trick. It is the reward. That is the best hope if white supremacy is allowed, not only to grow, but to continue. Now, as you experience this, hopefully it may become clear that it is of no matter to them whether or not you are white, but whether or not you are obedient and subservient.

This has been your interlude in erasure.