Don’t expect anything in exchange for your rebuking white supremacy.
There’s a scene in the film ” Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom ” where the leaders of South Africa’s Apartheid government express a willingness to finally give the world’s most famous political prisoner his freedom. After more than two decades in prison, what is Nelson Mandela willing to say or do in return?
“Nothing.”
That’s what he’s willing to do: absolutely nothing .
Indeed, when the real-life Mandela was released in February 1990 he was only a grayer version of the warrior he’d been before prison. He was, a New York Times story said about his first remarks after prison, “as eloquently militant” as he had been during his trial in 1964. ” Now is the time to intensify the struggle on all fronts. To relax our efforts now would be a mistake which generations to come will not be able to forgive.”
After a neo-Nazi at a ” Unite the Right ” rally in Charlottesville plowed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters some Americans are finally and reluctantly indicating a willingness to condemn the growing menace that is violent white supremacy. But, there’s a catch. While they’re doing that, they want black folks to condemn groups such as Black Lives Matter or the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.
I’m here to bring you the news that the black delegation says, “No.”
This is not a quid pro quo negotiation. Black people should not be expected to condemn people crying out against the oppression of black people in exchange for a half-hearted promise from white people to condemn the folks who seek to kill us. If you can’t condemn white supremacy without a “But remember that time when black people…, ” then you might as well just stay quiet.
On Saturday, Aug. 12, the day 32-year-old Heather Heyer was run over by a car in Charlottesville, Donald Trump said, “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides, ” and my initial response was that it would have been better if he had said nothing and just ignored the Charlottesville attack like he’d ignored that attack on a Minnesota mosque the previous Saturday. On Monday, the president read a statement that singled out the white supremacists for rebuke, but he did so with all the enthusiasm of a toddler whose mama has pushed him forward and said, “Now, say you’re sorry.” The next day, Trump was in full tantrum mode, yelling at reporters that the people on Heyer’s side were as responsible for her death as the white supremacists she opposed.
So absurd was Trump’s argument that he had to create new language, “the alt-left, ” to express it. “What about the ‘alt-left’ that came charging at, as you say, the ‘alt-right’? Let me ask you this: What about the fact they came charging — that they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do.”
I don’t know that there’s any evidence that Heyer or anybody else she was with was violent. But, even if they were, morally speaking, is violence against Nazis the same as violence perpetrated by Nazis? Is Nelson Mandela blowing up property owned by an Apartheid government the same as that Apartheid government stamping out the lives of black children?
I don’t know any fair-minded person who would equate that one form of violence with the other.
As for Charlottesville, many prominent Republicans have expressed dismay that the president of a country that lost more than 405,000 people in a fight against Nazis and fascists, can’t just call out such evil and put a period — actually, an exclamation point — behind it. What is wrong with him that he can’t do it?
And what is wrong with those who are parroting Trump’s language and attempting to use Charlottesville as a moment to make black people apologize for something? Or make people who are opposed to Nazis apologize for something? Seriously, what is wrong with y’all?
One email after another this week has attempted to make Black Lives Matter nefarious or has attempted to throw the Panthers in with the Klan. What about President Barack Obama receiving Black Lives Matter activists at the White House, readers crow, as if they’ve caught Obama, or me, in something. Let’s make it plain. The Panthers and Black Lives Matter formed in response to unchecked, racist police brutality. The Klan was formed to terrorize black people who’d just been freed from slavery. And the Nazis, lest you forget, killed up to 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of others they considered undesirable.
Though many politicians have criticized Trump and many CEOs and corporations are distancing themselves from him, Christianity Today reports that the country’s prominent white evangelical leaders are giving Trump high marks. According to Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas, “Racism comes in all shapes, all sizes, and yes, all colors. If we’re going to denounce some racism, we ought to denounce all racism.”
Racism has only worked one way in this country: elevating white people at the expense of everybody else. The preacher ought to be careful, lest he validate the white supremacists’ belief that something that’s happened to them justifies their terrorizing the land.
Jarvis DeBerry is deputy opinions editor for NOLA. COM | The Times-Picayune. He can be reached at jdeberry@nola.com or at twitter.com/jarvisdeberry .
