It's important to understand the present resurgence of white supremacy due to Donald Trump's racist rhetoric or refusal to repudiate white supremacists and his racist policies such as banning Muslims from traveling to the US and separating immigrant children from their parents and detaining them in jails. Many of the organized groups that support Trump have white supremacy at the center of their ideology and some even espouse turning the US into a whites-only country. The first time we saw a manifestation of how widespread white supremacy was in our country wasthe shocking rally of white supremacists (also called white nationalists) over two days in August of 2017 in Charlottesville, North Carolina.
It's important that we understand the challenges facing our country that affect us and that we have an intelligent response to it. Remember that these individuals are very confused, they actually believe their self-worth is based on being white. In fact, race is not even a biological fact, it is an invention of society. As you saw in the Helfand reading, it was an invention used to justify slavery. We'll talk more about this in class.
-Read this hand-out with one paragraph summarizing the rally and giving a time line of the events:
https://www.facinghistory.org/sites/default/files/Unite_the_Right_Rally_in_Charlottesville_Timeline.pdf(Links to an external site.)
-Watch this 2 minute news report so that you can see images of what happened:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/8/13/unite-the-right-white-supremacists-rally-in-virginia(Links to an external site.)
-Read this article that explains some of the groups and what their beliefs are and how Donald Trumps rhetoric has encouraged them. The good news is that organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center(SPLC) and the Jewish based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are devoted to tracking these groups and informing the public of their activities, as mentioned in the article. And of course, the Biden administration has committed to fight against this:
https://cnsmaryland.org/2020/04/02/with-rise-of-trump-came-rise-of-white-nationalism-critics-say/(Links to an external site.)
After reading and watching the three websites, write your reaction to this information. What do you think of this? Were you aware of this and specifically of the Charlottesville white power rallies? What are your concerns? Keep your response to 1 paragraph or 2 short ones.