Note to reader:
I think I’ve become that crazy guy who the newspaper never publishes letters from anymore. I should probably retitle this medium “Unpublished OpEds”
Is what it is. But when you work really hard to get in under 500 words…
Well, here’s the March 2021 edition, enjoy!
~ your friendly neighborhood “Rice Traitor”
White violence can take many forms.
White violence is a civil war to preserve chattel slavery, and the feeding of people into the prison-industrial complex. White violence is the lynching of a person for an alleged crime, and the death of a person in police custody. White violence is a coup against a racially integrated government in Wilmington, NC, and an insurrection in the name of Trumpism in Washington, DC.
White violence isn’t always obvious.
White violence can be the passionate defense of monuments to the Confederacy, which, as we saw in Charlottesville, can actually lead to physical violence,. White violence is born of fear of losing what percieved privilege is left from the time that America was “great”, and which comes out as defensiveness against any change, be it something as wide reaching as expanded voting access or efforts to “defund” the police, or something as simple and local as a change in school curriculum or not publishing a children’s book.
White violence inevitably follows white fear.
That is why telling the “truth” is dangerous. And the truth here is the acknowledgement that the sin of white supremacy is not only a historical fact but a present day reality.
That is what underlies movements like the effort to remove the Talbot Boys statue from the lawn of the courthouse in Easton, and the installation of a memorial to the victims of racial terror lynching here in Salisbury. And the fear that is sparked by both of those movements is the fear of seeing our country for what it is, not as what we thought it was.
But even speaking the truth is a step too far for most.
As Malcom X once said, “If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, that’s not progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. They haven’t pulled the knife out; they won’t even admit that it’s there.”
White violence demands silence and inaction.
Truth must be spoken out loud, but it also must be lived. Telling the truth is renaming a street “Black Lives Matter Boulevard”. Living the truth is understanding the reason why that phrase had to come into being and making sure it never has to be said again. Telling the truth is saying a conversation on race needs to happen. Living the truth is doing the right thing even if it never does. Telling the truth is taking down a statue, and putting up a memorial. Living the truth is repairing the damage that has been done, and continues to be done. To think otherwise is to hope for cheap grace paid for with good intentions, rather than a prodigal repentance paid with blood, sweat, and tears.
White violence is surmountable.
But first we have to admit it is there.
