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Terrorism By Any Other Name: Stop Trying To Normalize White Supremacy

Terrorism By Any Other Name: Stop Trying To Normalize White Supremacy

By Yvonne Sam
PRIDE Columnist

yvonne-samThe time has come to stop normalizing White supremacy and seeking to give it a more digestible name.

In the Shakespearean play, Romeo and Juliet, Act 11, Scene11, Juliet utters this phrase in reference to family and the family name of Romeo: What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.”

By this it is indicated that his family name has nothing to do with their love, and they should be together. Seeing that the Capulets and Montagues hate each other, love is consequently disallowed on account of these names.

It is obvious that America is experiencing problems in calling things by their real name: a spade is a spade and not a garden tool.

White supremacy is not alt-right, not White nationalism, but downright White supremacy. Today it’s alive and well in America and must be dealt with swiftly, if America is to move forward.

It is a bigger issue than American society has chosen to address, but it must be, as it affects daily lives at every level.

The definition of White supremacy, according to the Merriam Webster lexicon, is “believing that the White race is better than all other races and should have control over all other races.

The history of the United States`, from its inception, shows that White supremacy has been a foundational belief, shaping and molding the country’s culture. Now, many young whites have taken it upon themselves to adopt the longstanding belief of White supremacy to shape their thoughts and steer their actions.

On August 12, a march, scheduled as a protest following the removal of the statue of infamous Confederate General Robert E. Lee, ended in the death of Heather Heyer, a 32 year old female, who came to Charlottesville to protest against the

White supremacist rally. Several other counter-protestors were also injured as a result of a 20-year-old white male, James Alex Fields Jr., plunging his car into the crowd.

Many individuals, who knew the killer in high school, say he expressed and showed a deep interest in the life of Adolf Hitler and in Nazism.

He was charged with second-degree murder, malicious wounding and failure to stop in an accident that resulted in death.

In June 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina, Dylan Roof, an unrepentant White supremacist, shot and killed nine parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. This 21-year-old white male had videos and photos of himself, wrapped in the Confederate flag, circulating on social media.

Never, since the Civil Rights era, has America seen such a high level of White supremacy rhetoric. It gained a great deal of headway particularly during the candidacy and election of President Donald Trump. White Americans, both young and old, have been energized by the free-spirited partisan oratory that has been spewed by the President.

When challenged to condemn the Charlottesville incident, President Trump fell short in the estimation of many people, by not directly calling out White supremacy for what it truly was. Initially, he used extremely careful language, but in a later statement, he said that he condemned the “egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.”

There might have been many sides, but on that fateful day, only one side was on display…. White supremacists.

Former Klux Klan Grand Wizard, David Duke, who was also at the White Supremacist march, sternly rebuked President Trump saying, “I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror and remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists.”

Following Duke’s remarks, Trump further went on to claim that the counter-protestors started the incidents by “violently attacking the other group”, although he supplied no evidence of that claim. Duke also expressed his continuing support for Fields.

It has become increasingly impossible to ignore, particularly as it relates to the treatment of people of color, the increased level of negative activities perpetuated and boldly presented by White supremacists.

No longer can America be allowed to get away with watering down the reality of who these individuals are, by using creative phrases such as White nationalists or members of the Alt-right. To mollify the terminology of these individuals, many of whom commit acts of domestic terrorism, is the equivalent of calling a secretary an administrative assistant, or a stewardess a flight attendant.

White supremacists are White supremacists……point finale (full stop)!  Off with the blinkers!

Yvonne Sam, a retired Head Nurse and Secondary School Teacher, is Vice-president of the Guyana Cultural Association of Montreal. A regular columnist for over two decades with the Montreal Community Contact, her insightful and incursive articles on topics ranging from politics, human rights and immigration, to education and parenting have also appeared in the Huffington Post, Montreal Gazette, XPressbogg and Guyanese OnLine. She is also the recipient of the Governor General of Canada Caring Canadian Citizen Award.

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