The Last of the Rebel Yells

This piece evolved from an initial intent to post an article on the Busy Black Woman FB page featuring the faces of the "Unite the Right" protestors from Charlottesville. When the article and my commentary failed to post on my FB page (very unusual), I began writing the piece below in response, also in reflection from having attended my family reunion in Fredericksburg, VA. Here is part of what I wrote:

Unfortunately, the article I tried to post yesterday with the photo of the Unite the Right protestors did not post, nor did my message. But today, after all of the chaos, terror, destruction, and the unfortunate deaths, I have another opportunity to express my utter despair at what happened in Charlottesville yesterday.

As all of that nonsense was going on, I was in Fredericksburg for my family reunion. As a child, we would travel to "the country", at least once a year the second weekend in August to reunite those family members who had remained in Fredericksburg with those who had migrated to DC and Philadelphia. I hadn't been to one of these events since my grandmother passed away more than 20 years ago, for a variety of reasons I may share later. On the drive down I-95, we passed an enormous confederate flag that has been erected just past Quantico and right before Warrenton, VA.

So, just over an hour's drive away from the Nation's Capitol, the confederacy has resurrected itself on the side of a major interstate. I saw it the last time I drove down to Fredericksburg for my Aunt's funeral last fall; this time I asked my niece to take a photo so that we could post it online. She didn't get the picture, and now that I have had a chance to digest what occurred yesterday, I believe it was the hand of God maneuvering things so that we would not continue to spread the hate that flag represents. Of course, my reason for wanting to post a picture was to highlight that very sentiment, but it doesn't need to be broadcast by me.

I don't know all of the details of what happened yesterday in Charlottesville because we were absorbed in our bubble of reacquainting ourselves with distant relatives. But I was reminded of the very powerful reason why my grandmother and her favorite cousin left the "county" for DC and Philly so many decades ago--they wanted a better life for their children. They understood the limitations of opportunity for black Southerners, so they joined that Great Migration as young women and later established branches of our family tree in northern communities like so many of their peers. I can only imagine that some incident or mindset, similar to what was on display in Charlottesville yesterday, is what spurred them to leave.

I posted it here because in the days since the protests, I have been reflecting a LOT about what this all means today in 2017. Not that I had no expectations that the backlash to the Obama era had begun and ended with the last election (because, sadly this is only the beginning of the counter-revolution), but it builds on a theme that I felt compelled to express a few weeks back on July 4th. I framed that piece about being woke enough to cautiously appreciate that holiday, but now I want to stake out an even bolder position--that our celebrations of this country serve to appreciate our evolution, and then to demand that we continue to strive towards becoming a more perfect union.

Because these grand American ideals are for everyone.

If your ancestors died to preserve ideals that did not expand rights or that were meant to exclude people, then that is a reason to mourn, not celebrate. Your pride is rooted in something that is the very antithesis of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the ideals of our Founders--not the Confederate generals whose cause you defend. When you choose to stand for racial segregation, gender inequality, religious intolerance, and any other form of systematic oppression, it betrays them and every person who has ever shed blood for this country.

And of course, as I was writing this piece, the Trumpet sounded off again...and so I'm convinced that whenever I think I've missed the window to respond to his nonsense, I just need to give him six hours to say or do something else outrageous.

Too much has happened to unpack everything in one piece. So here are some themes I hope to address as I continue to examine my counter position to MAGA--America is for all of us:

1. We all hear your dog whistle, Mr. President, so no need trying to conceal it by deliberately changing the subject and getting angry. No more fake nuclear crises or hollow threats to fire members of your Cabinet.
2. Ironic that no one thought to be this overt during the tenure of the first black President. The worst you could muster up against Obama were racist cartoons, but this angry white mob thing is really quite a step forward. Feel free to march through the hood on your way back to the suburbs.
3. My Grandma Viola and her Cousin Ruth, and my other Grandmother Amanda and the many other thousands of black folks who migrated out of the South clearly understood why you march to preserve your old confederate monuments. And they aren't spinning in their graves over any of this because Barack Obama was the real shock...this backlash was to be expected.
4. There is no slippery slope when it comes to venerating Founding Fathers and Confederate generals. While many people have issues with our slave-owning Framers, most of us can see the difference between honoring the first President of the United States and honoring the President of the Confederacy. They are not equals.
5. This title of this piece comes from the name of a roller coaster at King's Dominion, an amusement park located in Virginia, north of Richmond. For years, I never knew to associate the name of the coaster with anything connected to the confederacy, but I had a doh moment a few years ago when I was teaching. That's how embedded certain colloquialisms are...yet, we need to be mindful as we evolve as a society. If these truly are harmless symbols, then moving them should not evoke such emotion.
6. Finally, thank you for leaving your bed sheets at home so that the world could really see your faces. Like many people, I was expecting to see more rowdies from the MAGA crowd because they are easier to ridicule. But color me shocked to see the IT guy at work, the guy who sells life insurance, the guy who manages the electronics store, and the kid's soccer coach. All clad in your Ralph Lauren polo shirts (he's a Jew, btw). 

Inside the Mind

I have been thinking a lot about the Rutgers student who jumped off the George Washington Bridge a couple of weeks ago.  His name was Tyler Clementi.  A lot of media attention has been focused on the fact that Clementi's roommate had been secretly taping and broadcasting video of his homosexual encounters.  A lot of people have focused on the role of technology, the apathy and possible culpability of the roommate...but what about the suicide?

I was thinking today about how difficult it must be for the family to understand how humiliation or embarassment led to this since there is no indication that anything else contributed to Clementi's decision to jump off that bridge.  I believe the humiliation was not the catalyst, but it was the tipping point...unfortunately, no one knew how deeply hurt this kid was.

I've been there.  Not suicidal, but deeply hurt enough to believe that if I just disappeared, life would go on just fine without me.  I felt that way a lot in high school--the cruelest time of my life (actually, middle school was the cruelest, but I hadn't developed the ability to brood about it yet).  In high school I was invisible to most of my peers.  Actually, they saw me quite clearly, but they determined that I was too young, too weird, too awkward, too unattractive, too eager, too talkative, etc. to be bothered with me. 

And that awkwardness followed me to college where I fell into pretty much the same pattern of disconnectedness.  I made friends, but we were not close and while they were off dating, I was in my room listening to Prince and Sade.  The difference about being away from home was that I did not have a family around to distract me from my peer isolation.  Luckily because there is a clique for everyone in college, my loneliness was temporary and I eventually found other friends with whom I connected.  But as an adult, I have had recurrent struggles with feeling alone, and I often think that people don't notice.

I feel badly for Tyler Clementi because instead of finding his niche in college, he encountered yet another predator who mocked him at his most vulnerable state.  Without knowing more about him, I am sure that Clementi was bullied in high school, but because he had his music and a family to counteract the toxic deluge of teenage ridicule, he built up a fragile immunity to his pain.  But once he went away to school, the protective cocoon of family was gone and he just could not see a way out other than to take his life.

What I hope will happen in the aftermath of this tragedy is that other people see and intervene before the darkness obscures the light of living.  In my experience, teenage depression is written off as moodiness, but there is an intensity to the darkness that is anything but typical.  Teenage angst feeds on insecurity and it is inside that darkness that a person can become vulnerable to the temptation to give up. 

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As I think about the darkness that overcame Tyler Clementi, I also thought about the other relevant fact about this tragedy which is the closet.  How hard must it be to live a lie because the light of the truth might place a bullseye on your back?  Of course, the LGBT folks totally understand that angle of the tragedy, but how much hatred and intolerance we can accept before someone else gets killed?  How many people shrugged this incident off because their belief system condones ridicule of homosexuality?  I thought about the standing ovation Bishop Eddie Long received when he addressed his congregation and how his extreme stance against homosexuality was essentially defended even as he stands accused of sexual abusing young men.  Or how the ridicule and harassment heaped upon another college student in Michigan gets defended as free speech by his boss.  Or how a group of protesters will get to argue the indefensible act of protesting homosexuality at the funerals of American soldiers at the Supreme Court.

I am afraid that I know what was in Tyler's head when he jumped...but what about the rest of us when we do not speak up to the bullies of intolerance?  Are we just watching more kids like Tyler take the plunge?