"The Other Side"

Ever since Trump was elected, there have been a ton of messes. The most recent and horrific is arguably the tragic events at a gathering of white supremacists in Charlottesville, where a car plowed into a group of counter-protesters, killing a woman named Heather Heyer. 

Because of events like Charlottesville, there has been an emergence of "antifa," short for anti-fascism, a "far left fringe group." One of the reasons I haven't written anything about antifa is because I first heard about the group when Trump mentioned it. During a press conference after the events in Charleston, Trump asked, “What about the alt-left that came charging at the — as you say, the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt? What about the fact they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem?" 

(Nevermind the fact that several people were injured and a woman lost his life. No, his first instinct was to focus on who to blame first. Anyway, I digress.) 

I didn't really believe what Trump had to say because he's Trump, and also because David Duke endorsed his comments. But, on Sunday, antifa showed up to an anti-racism protest at UC Berkeley, attacking Trump supporters and others they accused of being white supremacists. 

Jelani Cobb, an educator and writer at the New Yorker, wrote a piece where he declared that "the antifa protests are helping Donald Trump." When I first saw the headline, I was confused, because I hadn't heard about the violence and also because I figured that antifa were just that - against fascism. I was still confused and almost concerned when I finished reading. 

Cobb has an influx of people heading to his Twitter account, some calling him a sellout, which seems super dramatic. Nevertheless, I'm torn on the piece. Cobb has gone through a great deal of schooling, way more than me, and I also respect his work and writing. But I found that I disagreed. 

Before I get into it, his overall argument - that punching random Nazis is counterproductive - makes sense. It seems like punching any random person isn't going to help make anything better. It's not a horrible argument. I've seen many people share the same, rather articulately. 

I just don't understand it completely. 

Yes, we all want to avoid as much violence as possible. Yes, attacking people and accusing them of being white supremacists is bad. I don't think that there's a problem with self defense. Neither does Cobb.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The interesting point here is that I&#39;m not a pacifist. To paraphrase Obama on Iraq, I&#39;m not against violence, I&#39;m against stupid violence.</p>&mdash; jelani cobb (@jelani9) <a href="https://twitter.com/jelani9/status/902634630796410881">August 29, 2017</a></blockquote>

<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

My question is what constitutes stupid violence. I think that randomly attacking someone when you're unsure of who they are could be considered "stupid violence." But Cobb also references the protests at UC Berkeley that occurred earlier this year, when Milo Yiannopoulos was set to speak there. Protesters smashed windows and set fires, and Yiannopoulos didn't speak.

I don't think that was stupid violence. 

I think that Yiannopoulos is a horrible racist, among other things. He's referred to Leslie Jones as "barely literate," and called her a "black dude." He's called a Buzzfeed reporter a "thick-as-pig shit media Jew." He's harassed and outed a transgender student during an appearance at the University of Wisconsin.  He's called Black Lives Matter a terrorist group that fights "a war on police and a war on white people." He's said that Islam is cancer. He's said that trans people are mentally ill. 

Long story short, he's hate speech personified. 

Not wanting this person speaking at the school I intend (especially since he outed a trans student at a college appearance) is understandable. I remember having a conversation about this with my teacher. He worried that, if the "other side" couldn't share their views, we would soon lose this ability as well. 

"But what do you do," I asked him. "If their views are that you aren't a real person? That they hate you? That you shouldn't exist?" 

He didn't have an answer to me. 

It's because of this that I can't partake in this "both sides are at fault" argument. Perhaps Cobbs and I disagree, but I believe that merely having someone like Milo speaking at my school is an instance of violence. 

I don't think that black people or queer people or any marginalized person should have to bear the weight of hatred in order to help the "greater good." A student at UC Berkeley shouldn't have to listen to someone like Milo spew racist or transphobic ideas at their place of schooling. 

"Well Camryn," you say. "They don't have to listen. They can just sit there. They don't have to go. They can get up and leave."

But what does this say about the school that I'm going to? The mere fact that people refer to hateful ideas as "different opinions" only legitimizes them. When people support Trump, they back up his actions. When people identify as white supremacists, they don't believe that I am a real person. It's not a different opinion than mine. It's hatred, even if they don't physically attack me. 

Cobb referred to the both protests at Berkeley as "morally wrong." I can understand labelling the actions at the second protest that way, but not the first. What's morally wrong about starting fires and breaking windows when my school is fine with committing violence against me? To take it a step further, why should hateful Trump supporters or white nationalists be treated with non-violence when they don't offer us the same? 

Furthermore, I don't care about morals anymore. Heather Heyer has died. Because Trump reinstated the pipeline that gives military weapons to local police, more unarmed black people will die.  Because of Trump's actions and spot in the white house, more hate crimes will occur.

Because of white supremacy, more black people will be faced with violence. 

What I'm trying to say is that Trump supporters and white supremacists do not care if we fight back with violence. Well, that's false. I'm sure that they care, because it makes them upset. I agree with Cobb's point that these instances will be used to defend Trump, his supporters, and white supremacists. But so what? 

Martin Luther King was nonviolent and they killed him.

Anyway, the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s was accused of inciting violence. Eight liberal white clergymen accused MLK of being too aggressive and counterproductive (his response, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, is a must read.) People opposed the March on Washington because they thought it could create more violence. People called his demonstrations "excessive." 

In 1968, a black man wrote to King stating, "After knowing the honest truth about this and many other deaths caused by your calm riots, we as a body had rather not have any thing else to do with you or your so called righteous riots or better, righteous murders.”

No matter what happens, these people aren't going to be nicer to us. They won't play fair just because we do. I mean, before the American revolution, Loyalists were all, "Guys, stop throwing tea in the harbor. It's making us no better than us. We don't want to be stupid about this." And sure, our country is horrible to a lot of people of color, especially Native Americans, and didn't give us freedom or anything, but I digress. 

Cobb wrote that people like Nelson Mandela used "violence when it was efficacious, nonviolence when that was effective. Power came from understanding that." But when do we reach that point? How long do we suffer in silence, allowing people to spread racist and hateful ideas? 

To me, if a white person calls me a nigger, that is violence. If that white person gets hit, I think it's justified, because that is self defense. 

When white nationalist Richard Spencer was punched during an interview, I thought it was self defense. 

Of course, there are actions that antifa have made that I don't agree with. I generally don't want violence in general. But the fact is that it's here. When slave riots happened on plantations, slaves were blamed, even though it started with slave owners. When riots started in Ferguson, black people were blamed, even though the violence started with the police.

We face violence when we are non-violent. We face violence when we say nothing. We face violence when we fight back with violence. No matter what we do, they will always find something wrong with it. Even though I always think we can do better, I also know that people will find problems with everything we decide to do. 

White nationalists and white supremacy have started the violence. Their ideology is inherently violent. The core of their ideology is violence. I can't say that I blame those who fight back with violence. Survival is an essential aspect of the black spirit. 

Sometimes survival means fighting back.

who will tell the story?

One of my coping mechanisms is imagining the future. When I'm worried about a particularly stressful day of school, I imagine what it will be like to do nothing during summer vacation. When I'm irritated with my mother's rules, I imagine what it would be like to live alone in a few years. When I get jealous of characters in romance books, I imagine being in love in the future.

Donald Trump was voted as the next president, and there isn't a future I can imagine that will make this any kind of better. 

I keep thinking about all of the work people have been doing. Calling senators and representatives, writing pieces about all of the reasons why Trump shouldn't be president, and protesting right outside of Trump tower. All of it is swept aside, even the facts. 

People are so eager to ignore the fact that he's extremely racist, has a horrible record with women, has been accused of sexual assault, and is all sorts of mixed up with Russia. I haven't even touched everything. They'll ignore the fact that Pence doesn't care for the reproductive rights of women or LBGTQ+ people.  

They're both horrible, and I don't understand how this is just ignored. Republicans are people, after all, and I believe that they have common sense. My father's best friend is a republican, and I often wonder if he agrees with all of these ideas and statements. I wonder if all of the people who voted for Trump agree that people of color and queer people and women are less than them. 

They do. I can't come to any other conclusion. 

There are Trump supporters in my school, in my town. I can tell because of the statements made in class, but also because of the stickers on cars. Ever since Election Day, I've been extremely aware of my identity. Even the white people who said they weren't going to vote for Trump must have, since 58% of white people voted for him. 

As a black woman, I'm often in spaces that are dominated by white people. I've found that part of my experience is having to suspend disbelief. Part of being "respectable" is accepting the idea that most white people aren't racist, or at least pretending to. But how can I believe this after watching this election? How do we go from a gorgeous black family in the White House to this?

I've accepted the fact that I know more about racism than the white people who teach me. There are three black teachers in my school, and I haven't had any of them. I wish that I could see them everyday, if only for the comfort of knowing that there is another person of color around. I had to explain the concept of institutional racism to a teacher, and was exhausted by the end. 

It is exhausting, to constantly have to explain myself. Why must I constantly prove that there is a system actively working against people of color? Why do I have to bring in sources and argue in a calm voice in order to be considered? Even so, white people always have the chance to ignore me. I don't know if it's even worth it when I'm done. I'm so tired of this. 

Since Election Day, I've rejected the idea that only some white people are racist. I hate the way they use the word, as if it's some sort of insult. White people ignore the ingrained racism inside of them while pretending that race plays no part whatsoever in their lives. My teacher will lecture me about how black people can be racist while also making fun of the names of black students. 

She doesn't consider herself "racist," because to white people, it is an extreme. In order to be racist, they have to declare that they hate black people, or people from Mexico, or people with different skin colors. That definition is so rudimentary; it is almost as if it was taught in first grade and no one ever expanded on it. That might be because the concept of racism is never taught in school, not past the idea that MLK ended it all before he died. 

The fact of the matter is that our country is built on racism. It's still part of the fabric of this country, and no one has ever tried to pull it away. At this point, so far in our history, racism can not be distinguished from the characteristics of our nation. From the moment that the Constitution was written, black people were excluded. 

Cotton was the source of the economy for decades, because of slave labor. Black people have strengthened this nation with blood and bones and lynched bodies. We've received nothing in return. We were never even asked if we wanted this. And today, we act as if slavery is some distant system that no longer holds any impact on our daily lives. 

White people started off with a hundred year head start, and no one ever made them stop so that black people could catch up. They simply continued running, while we were forced to stop, over and over and over again. Now, we are blamed for our unequal status in society, if it is even acknowledged. We are told to work harder to move up, as if white people had to work through Jim Crow and lynchings and systemic racism while attempting to hold their families together.

White people are born into this system of racism, and many of them do not unlearn it. Black people are also born into this system of racism, but we are forced to learn. From the moment your parents give you the speech about working twice as hard, the moment your mother tells you how to behave around police, the moment you realize that you're the only "good" black child in your class. 

What a tremendous privilege it must be to go through life without being aware of this. Classmates, even teachers, tell me stories of how their ancestors immigrated to this country and built themselves up. I have no idea how my ancestors got to this country. I have an advertisement for a runaway slave, the earliest family member I'm aware of. I'm in awe of his bravery, but I don't understand how he and an immigrant from Poland is compared. 

The Polish immigrant was able to assimilate. He could lose his accent, his mannerisms, and look just like the white people who were already here. Eventually, people forgot why they hated the Polish, and they became apart of whiteness. This could never happen to my ancestor, because his skin was dark and could not be scrubbed off. He lived always looking over his shoulder, avoiding the white man and the KKK. 

Even though most southerners didn't own slaves, they were part of this culture. They believed that slavery kept their lives stable. They believed that black people were less than them. Even Abraham Lincoln was more interested in preserving the Union than abolishing slavery. I know that slavery could've ripped this nation apart, but is a country that only values a white man worth salvaging? 

Lincoln believed so, but perhaps this is because he knew his children would benefit. What a tremendous privilege. 

As my teacher told our class a story about her life, all I could think of was her privilege. She almost failed out of high school, but is successful today. I couldn't help but think about all of the failing black kids in my school who are ignored, except for when adults want to use them as scapegoats. 

"Don't be like them," they say, even if not explicitly. "They have no drive. They won't go anywhere." 

It is this same privilege that has allowed these white people to vote for Trump without a thought of the repercussions. They insist that they aren't racist, as if all it takes is to use the word "nigger." They ignore the fact that they play into this system, that they make behavior more acceptable by supporting Trump. 

They're eager to call out "radical Islamic terrorists," but are silent when it comes to Dylann Roof. I think this is because they know, at the back of their minds, that they created him. They created him with their comments: "black people take advantage of the system," "they're all drug addicts and can't get real jobs," "they're behind us because they're lazy."

They created him with their silence. Those who stand by for these comments are just as guilty. 

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who supports Trump is not my friend. I don't care that white people wanted a "change," that they chose this fate for our country while thinking only of themselves. 

I don't care that the electors wanted to follow in tradition. I didn't expect this group of mostly white people to save me, not when the concept of the electoral college is already rooted in racism. But I find it disappointing that I'm not yet old enough to vote, and I already don't trust my government. 

I don't care that people are burning flags and sitting down during the pledge. I don't care if you get upset that I refuse to acknowledge Trump as president. If these are things that you are worried about, talk to people like my parents, who are worried about how our lives will change. 

Talk to people like my Muslim friends, who are already terrified at rising hate crimes. Talk to my trans friends, who know the vice president does not care about them. Talk to young women like me, who worry about my reproductive rights with a GOP dominated Congress. 

This is not as simple as disliking the person who won. I am worried about my quality of life. I am worried about friends getting deported, families getting ripped apart. I am worried because this country stopped caring about me once I stopped picking cotton and taking orders. My heart aches for people like Van Jones, who do not know how to explain this fact to their children. 

I have come to one conclusion: white people voted against their self interest because they were afraid. Working class white people are upset that they are slowly fading from the focus. They desperately want to hold onto the times where they were the only ones who were important. When they say "make America great again," they mean times where uppity people of color weren't demanding rights. White people were afraid of losing the privilege this country constructed for them. 

I've been trying to think forward, four years from now, but I'm not sure what it will be like. I'm already apprehensive around white people, angry at all of them, even though I know it isn't fair. I just can't bring myself to care about fair, not when the race was never even from the beginning. 

Perhaps one day, when I'm older, I'll be able to talk to people about this. I'll tell them that I wasn't sure how to fight, but that I kept writing. I hope that writing will be enough. I hope that stories will be enough, as they have been in the past. No matter how hopeless I feel, I will keep telling them.

I owe it to those who came before, and those who will come after. 

(An ad for one of my ancestors, Isam, who was 25 years old when he escaped.) 

xo,

Camryn