White supremacy has to be confronted if America is to move forward

Sep 09, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
The time has come to stop normalizing White supremacy and seeking to give it a more digestible name. In the Shakespearean play Romeo and Juliet, Act 11 Scene11 Juliet utters this phrase in reference to family and family name of Romeo. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
It is obvious that America is experiencing problems in calling things by their real name -White supremacy is not alt-right… not White nationalism but downright White supremacy and today it’s alive and well in America and must be dealt with swiftly if America is to move forward. It is a bigger issue than American society has chosen to address, but it must be as it affects daily lives at every level.
According to the Merriam Webster lexicon White supremacy is “believing that the White race is better than all other races and should have control over all other races. The history of the United States from its inception shows that White supremacy has been a foundational belief, shaping and moulding the country’s culture, and now many young whites have taken it upon themselves to adopt this longstanding belief to shape their thoughts and steer their actions.
On August 12, a march scheduled as a protest following the removal of the statue of infamous Confederate General Robert E. Lee, ended in the death of Heather Heyer, a 32 year old female who came to Charlottesville to protest against the White supremacist rally. Several other counter protestors were also injured as a result of a 20 year old white male, James Alex Fields Jr., plunging his car into the crowd. Many individuals who knew the killer in high school say he expressed and showed a deep interest in the life of Adolf Hitler and in Nazism. He was charged with second-degree murder, malicious wounding and failure to stop in an accident that resulted in death.
June 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina, Dylan Roof an unrepentant White supremacist shot and killed nine parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. This 21 year old white male had videos and photos of himself wrapped in the Confederate flag circulating on social media.
Never since the Civil Rights era has America seen such a high level of White supremacy rhetoric. It gained a great deal of headway particularly during the candidacy and election of President Donald Trump. White Americans both young and old have been energized by the free-spirited partisan oratory that has been spewed by the President.
When challenged to condemn the Charlottesville incident, President Trump fell short in the estimation of many people, by not directly calling out White supremacy for what it truly was. Initially, he used extremely careful language, but in a later statement, he said that he condemned “egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” There might have been many sides, but on that fateful day only one side was on display…. White supremacists.
Former Klux Klan Grand Wizard Davis Duke who was also at the White Supremacist march, sternly rebuked President Trump saying,” I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror and remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists.”
Following Duke’s remarks, Trump further went on to claim that the counter protestors started the incidents by “violently attacking the other group,” although he supplied no evidence of that claim. Duke also expressed his continuing support for Fields.
It has become increasingly impossible to ignore, particularly as it relates to the treatment of people of color the increased level of negative activities perpetuated and boldly presented by White supremacists.
No longer can America be allowed to get away with watering down the reality of who these individuals are, by using creative phrases such as White nationalists or members of the Alt-right. To mollify the terminology of these individuals, many of whom commit acts of domestic terrorism is the equivalent of calling a secretary an administrative assistant, or a stewardess a flight attendant. White supremacists are White supremacists Pointe Finale! Off with the blinkers!
Yvonne Sam

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One thought on “White supremacy has to be confronted if America is to move forward”

Kassem_B September 9, 2017 at 4:44 am

‘White supremacy has to be confronted if America is to move forward’
And what about awee Guyana?

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