Walking About Racism

THIS PAST WEEKEND an extremely small, disappointingly for its organizers small group of white skinned people gathered together in Washington D.C. and took a short walk. They were greatly outnumbered by another group who opposed their walk. Since this small group was of the "white" race, and since a fair number of them allegedly sported crosses, swastikas, and white underwear, it became tempting to describe the group as 'white supremacists". Contributing to this impression, the event occurred on the first anniversary of a more impressive and violent event in Charlottesville, Virginia, which if fact was a self described white power white supremacist rally, in which the symbols of bigotry were worn exterior to the underwear, in more emboldened times. but not so fast. Grand high dragon Jason Kessler was adamantly insisted that white supremacy had nothing to do with it, that in fact the gathering's purpose was not to assert any sort of supremacy, but instead to issue a plea for white equality, to highlight the need for white people in America to cast of their chains of oppression, and to gain equal social status with African-Americans, Hispanics, and other privileged minorities. Yes, he really said all that. The whit folk in America, in this paradigm, are suffering lower status as blacks, browns, gays, and maybe even transgenders dominate them. The Christian faith, accordingly, is under attack by the thirty percent of American who practice other beliefs. it is remarkably easy to spin a ludicrously false narrative and to make it sound, fleetingly, credible, as climate change deniers, neo-liberal free marketeers,, and hard core right winders well know. Good try, Jason Kessler, but not quite good enough. In a traditionally, indisputably white-Christian dominated America, only very recently have minorities begun to gain some semblance of equality, and this is what the right wing seems to find so disturbing; the loss of white privilege. Pretending to demonstrate for equality for whites is more palatable than honestly complaining about the loss of superior statue for whites, so, repackage. regrettably for the white supremacists bigots, we the sane of America are not so easily deceived, and you might think the bigots would realize that their juvenile machinations are transparent, but, evidently not.