We’re not immune to racism
There’s a short movie from 1947 that recently went viral in response to the heartbreaking events in Charlottesville. In “Don’t Be A Sucker,” a man stands on a soapbox in a town square, ranting against various minority groups for “taking American jobs” and threatening the American way of life. A young, clean cut man watches and initially agrees with the sentiments until his own identity (Freemason) is included in the list. He’s approached by an older Hungarian man, a refugee of the Third Reich, who proceeds to explain to him the danger of what’s happening, and that he never expected to hear in America the rhetoric used by the Nazis.
“They knew they were not strong enough to conquer a unified country,” says the older man, “so they split Germany into small groups, they used prejudice as a practical weapon to trigger the nation. Of course, it was not easy to do, they had to work hard to do it. We human beings are not born with prejudices. Always they are made for us.”
That should be the key lesson of the movie, and one that is painfully relevant today.
But there’s another important takeaway from “Don’t Be A Sucker.” Then as now, we Americans are too prone to think that we’re better than and invulnerable to fascism and racism.
Jia Tolentino wrote a piece for the New Yorker on Sunday that summed this up well: “The belief that America is somehow better than its white-supremacist history is sometimes an excuse masquerading as encouragement, and it’s part of the reason why the KKK is back in business. What happened in Charlottesville is less an aberrant travesty in a progressive enclave than it is a reminder of how much evil can be obscured by the appearance of good.”
I myself have been guilty
of falling into this line of thought, allowing prejudices against people from a certain region of the country, or with less access to education, and so forth, to help me write off racist and xenophobic attitudes as being both easily identifiable and safely cordoned off in small pockets of society.
If the reactions to Charlottesville do nothing else,
they have starkly highlighted just how wrong that attitude is. I’ve read too many otherwise liberal and/or well-meaning people tie themselves in rhetorical knots to defend and deflect, drawing false equivalencies between white supremacist groups and the Black Lives Matter and antifa (literally short for “anti-fascist”) movements. I’ve heard too many people defend the existence of monuments to men notable for nothing but fighting on behalf of secession and slavery. It’s notable that the vast majority of Confederate memorials were erected during the Jim Crow era, and later in response to the Civil Rights movement.
White supremacists and Nazis showed up to protest while carrying torches, semi-automatic weapons, body armor, shields and bats. They intentionally surrounded predominantly black churches to threaten and intimidate — while chanting things like “Jews will not replace us!”
They are not remotely on par with counter-protesters who attempted to protect those churches and people, who stood against such displays of hate and racism and were hurt and even killed for their efforts. No matter what Trump might claim.
We cannot let hate divide us, and at the same time we must fully understand and acknowledge that it exists and we are not immune to it.
The United States was founded on the idea that there’s strength in the unity of diverse people. That’s something the Confederacy couldn’t bring itself to understand and why it was doomed. It’s what Nazis and other vile power seekers rely on.
If you find yourself wanting to change the conversation from the difficult but necessary topic of how white supremacy has absolutely shaped and warped our country, to casting blame at the feet of the very people who would dare fight back after suffering centuries of oppression at its hands, you would do well to take a breath and rethink what side of history you’d like to be on.
Don’t be a sucker.