If you haven’t seen or heard anything about Charlottesville, VA, in the news this past week, you’ve probably been living (happily) in an impenetrable social media-free bubble, where the words “white supremacy” and “alt-right” haven’t managed to chill you to your core.
In any case, the “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville on Aug. 12 saw the gathering of hundreds of white nationalists at the University of Virginia, who carried flaming torches while yelling chants including “white lives matter” and “blood and soil.” Neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members clashed with counter-protesters, leaving many people bleeding, battered and bruised as punches were thrown and smoke bombs were released. One counter-protester, Heather Heyer, was killed, after being struck by a car that ploughed into a counter-protestor group.
President Donald Trump’s first tweet about Charlottesville called for unity: “We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets [sic] come together as one!”
Although it’s coming from a man who has not condemned this bigotry in the past, one sentence of his statement really struck me. To “come together as one” is a lovely sentiment, but it’s an idea far easier to preach than practice—especially when Trump helped normalize and instigate this racism, the same racism on which he has built a presidency and a real estate empire.
On Aug. 13, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to Twitter to denounce the rally, writing: “We know Canada isn’t immune to racist violence & hate. We condemn it in all its forms & send support to the victims in Charlottesville.”
To me, Trudeau’s response served as an important reminder that while we as Canadians would like to see ourselves as being far more progressive than our neighbours to the South, these tragic events impacted us all. We pride ourselves on being multicultural—on being a colourful mosaic as the shiny alternative to the American melting pot.
However, the reverberations from Charlottesville are frequently felt here in our own backyard each time a person of colour is shot by police, each time someone tells us to “go back where we came from” and each time we are exoticized or threatened because of the melanin in our skin.
Trudeau addressing how racist violence occurs here too is integral to recognizing the severity of the situation. Do I wish he did more than simply tweet about it? Absolutely. Do I believe what he said will make a difference? Probably not.
But the point is this: racist violence happens every day in whatever country in which we live. We are enveloped in it. It’s an entrenched part of our lives. And the first step to doing something about it is acknowledging it’s a universal problem. Just because there is a border to separate us does not mean we are isolated from what happened.
As racialized tensions run high, it’s sad to say that I’m not surprised at what happened in the least. This hatred seems to be more and more prevalent. As heartbreaking as it is, I’ve become numb to it all. We live in a world where these things are everywhere. They always have been, if you want to open a history book. What happened in Charlottesville is not the first taste of white supremacy and it definitely will not be the last.
Until we can accept and embrace our differences to celebrate each other as equal human beings with love and respect, the hate will always win. We will never “be immune” to it until that transpires. Heather Heyer did not die for us to tweet about our frustrations and then move on. We need to be better.
If there is one thing Charlottesville can teach us all, it’s that we must realize we still have a very long way to go.
