On Charlottesville

I have seen a lot of really ignorant and hateful posts on Facebook these past few days from people I had thought were rational, reasonable people.

People who post nothing condemning ACTUAL Nazi's flying Nazi flags, or actual White Power KKK Members running around in white robes, but post about how bad the "Alt-left" and "Antifa" and "Black Lives Matter" groups are.

Never once realizing that they EXIST SOLELY in response to the extreme proliferation of white nationalist, nazi, and racist culture in this country. It makes me terribly sad to see so many years of progress wiped away in a few short months.

Look at the people in this photo chanting "we will not be replaced" and "blood and soil".

Just imagine if they had to face any REAL oppression in their lives.

There has been no massive historical effort at the state and local level to disenfranchise them of the vote.

There is no history of centuries of bad science devoted to 'proving' their intellectual inferiority.

There is no danger for them when they carry dangerous weaponry publicly.

Their lawns never decorated with burning crosses

Their ancestors never hung from trees

Their mothers aren't being torn away by ICE troopers and sent away forever.

They won't be forced to leave the only country they ever knew.

Nobody is trying to legislate away their right to marry the one they love.

The law never:

Enslaved their great-grandparents

Robbed their grandparents

Imprisoned their parents

Shot them while unarmed

REAL Pride movements spring up in response to years, decades, even centuries of REAL oppression and hatred. The last thing white males have ever had to face (myself included) is REAL oppression.

I don't have to worry about getting randomly pulled over just because of the color of my skin. Or worry if I'm going to be harassed or arrested or shot because of the clothes I wear.

Do you want to imagine what a world of REAL white oppression looks like?

Give them a world where you ACTUALLY can't say Christmas.

A world where the name "Chad" or "Cody" on a resume puts it in the trash.

Give them a world where they suddenly get a 20% pay cut, and then 70 women every day tell them to smile more.

Give them a world where their polo shirt makes people nervous, so they're kicked off the flight from Pittsburgh to Indianapolis.

Give them a world where if they pulled up on a campus with torches lit and started throwing hands, the cops would happily beat the lot of them and throw them all in jail, with sentences that are 30% longer than everyone elses.

Give them a world where they inherited nothing but a very real understanding of what oppression really fucking is.

Thanks to @juliusgoat on twitter for much of this!