Evil Came Knocking

This past weekend, racism, hatred, and violence engulfed my beloved Charlottesville. It was terrifying to be so close to so much animosity, to see the ugliness in people on display without shame. I am used to my town making headlines for being the best place to live or for having a beautiful college campus or the happiest people in the country. This weekend’s events don’t represent the Charlottesville I know. I live in a town where you see this bumper sticker on every other car you pass:

and this welcome sign in many front yards:

I feel violated. We, of all towns, don’t welcome racism or hatred. But the Nazi flag was raised here this weekend and I shudder to think that anyone wants to go back to that horrible, horrible time.

Several weeks ago, I had started watching a PBS documentary about the 1936 Olympic rowing team, the subject of the fantastic book, The Boys in the Boat. But I hadn’t been able to finish it and returned to it again yesterday, forgetting the huge Nazi presence at those Olympic games. And there it was - the same Nazi flag those invaders brought to my town this weekend - on the screen with Hitler and plastered all over the largely-unsuspecting Germany.

But I, of course, was not unsuspecting, watching this documentary, and knew the horror that awaited Germany and the world thanks to that flag and the ideology it represented, still represents. Seeing it, after experiencing the events of this weekend, affected me like no other time I’ve seen that flag. I literally recoiled, then gave thanks that I was home, in my basement, where I felt safe - a silly reaction, since my skin color and ¼ German blood would have protected me from Nazi attention, but that’s how shaken the events of this weekend left me.

It occurred to me tonight, though, that, as bad as the events were in Charlottesville this weekend, they are nothing compared to outright violence, persecution, and war people face in countries around the world. Immediately, my mind goes to the Sunni/Shiite, Hutu/Tutsi, Palestinian/Jew, South Sudan, Afghanistan, etc. crises. What those people experience is much, much worse than what we experienced in Charlottesville this past weekend. We think this is bad; there is 1,000 times worse.

I don’t say that to belittle what happened here and what is happening around our country. We have a huge problem we need to fix. But what has come to us is only the merest taste of what our brothers and sisters around the world have been facing for many years now. I wouldn’t want to stay in Charlottesville if I knew this past weekend’s events were going to become an everyday occurrence – and I’m not even a target of the groups involved. I would want to find safety in some other town. And if safety were mine to offer, I would offer it to anyone else who felt fearful of staying here as well. I’m sure you would do the same.

So why do we look at the refugee crisis around the world and refuse them entry to a safe place? Why do we feel scared of them? They’re the ones fleeing the violence, not the perpetrators. Why do we not open our arms and welcome them, like we would welcome anyone running from the hatred spread around Charlottesville this past weekend? Maybe the events of this weekend, in addition to raising the issue of racism to a national conversation, could lead us to have more compassion on people around the world who suffer from the results of racism, supremacy, and hatred every single day. Maybe now it will be easier to “do unto others what you would have them do unto you.”