Showing your true colors
The demonstrators at Charlottesville were misunderstood. That's one of the things I was hearing last night. They're not like the white supremacists of old. They don't think white people are better than everyone else. They just want equality. If Black Lives Matter, they want White Lives to matter too. If there's a Gay Pride Month, they want a Straight Pride Month. What's wrong with that?
A lot of these demonstrators looked like they were college-age, and in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that when I was that age, I too had some ignorant viewpoints and did some insensitive things. (Although really, if I was that age and had been there in Charlottesville, I'd like to think the swastikas might have tipped me off that I was in the wrong crowd.) I can see how a young white person, especially someone who's grown up sheltered and privileged, might not realize that in our society, White Lives always matter and every month is Straight Pride Month. Those are assumed to be the default conditions. We don't need special days or months or organizations to remind everyone we have value. Society makes that painfully obvious every single day.
The claim got me wondering, though, about what a "White Heritage Festival" might look like. I'm going to a Japanese cultural festival this Saturday, and it will feature Japanese art and music and food. I've seen Native American festivals and Mexican American festivals that do similar things. It's a way of saying, "Look at all the neat, fun stuff you can do in our culture!" If I was to take part in a "Hoosier Heritage Festival" here in California, would we play basketball and race go-karts? Would we find out about growing corn and soybeans? Would we read James Whitcomb Riley and Kurt Vonnegut while eating pork tenderloin sandwiches? (Okay, I'd have to pass on the sandwiches, but I'm up for the other stuff.) Might it look something like this?
Of course, we didn't see any of those things in Charlottesville, or any other examples of fun, neat stuff you can do in the culture of "real" America. The only things these "real" Americans seemed interested in were yelling and screaming, waving guns around and generally saying, "Tell us we're the best or we'll beat you into submission." Is that really who we want to be? Really?
Look, I'm all in favor of celebrating who you are - as long as you remember that everyone else has just as much right to celebrate who they are, too. It's even more fun that way. And surely there are better things you can show people about yourself than big guns and ugly slogans.
And I haven't even gotten started on "Confederate heritage" yet. That's a topic for another time.
A lot of these demonstrators looked like they were college-age, and in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that when I was that age, I too had some ignorant viewpoints and did some insensitive things. (Although really, if I was that age and had been there in Charlottesville, I'd like to think the swastikas might have tipped me off that I was in the wrong crowd.) I can see how a young white person, especially someone who's grown up sheltered and privileged, might not realize that in our society, White Lives always matter and every month is Straight Pride Month. Those are assumed to be the default conditions. We don't need special days or months or organizations to remind everyone we have value. Society makes that painfully obvious every single day.
The claim got me wondering, though, about what a "White Heritage Festival" might look like. I'm going to a Japanese cultural festival this Saturday, and it will feature Japanese art and music and food. I've seen Native American festivals and Mexican American festivals that do similar things. It's a way of saying, "Look at all the neat, fun stuff you can do in our culture!" If I was to take part in a "Hoosier Heritage Festival" here in California, would we play basketball and race go-karts? Would we find out about growing corn and soybeans? Would we read James Whitcomb Riley and Kurt Vonnegut while eating pork tenderloin sandwiches? (Okay, I'd have to pass on the sandwiches, but I'm up for the other stuff.) Might it look something like this?
Of course, we didn't see any of those things in Charlottesville, or any other examples of fun, neat stuff you can do in the culture of "real" America. The only things these "real" Americans seemed interested in were yelling and screaming, waving guns around and generally saying, "Tell us we're the best or we'll beat you into submission." Is that really who we want to be? Really?
Look, I'm all in favor of celebrating who you are - as long as you remember that everyone else has just as much right to celebrate who they are, too. It's even more fun that way. And surely there are better things you can show people about yourself than big guns and ugly slogans.
And I haven't even gotten started on "Confederate heritage" yet. That's a topic for another time.
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