{"id":45188,"date":"2017-08-15T23:38:10","date_gmt":"2017-08-16T03:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=45188"},"modified":"2020-08-02T23:38:31","modified_gmt":"2020-08-03T03:38:31","slug":"what-charlottesville-has-done-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=45188","title":{"rendered":"What Charlottesville has done to me"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not often I want to go back to a major topical event, but admittedly, I\u2019m having a hard time letting this one go.\u00a0 It\u2019s on the tongue of every news outlet, and even in the endlessly flowing stream of social media, it\u2019s still a hot topic that is still the talk of the town.\u00a0 But the emergence of blatant white supremacy, the supposed neo-Nazis, and just plain eruption of bigotry that took America by storm in of all places, Charlottesville, Virginia has been a pretty big story, with some everlasting repercussions and impressions, whether people other than myself want to admit to it or not.<\/span><\/p>\n

Originally, I assumed it was mostly populated by the degenerate hill tribes<\/a> of Virginia where the KKK is known to still be around, but it turns out that it was slightly more organized, and comprised of people from all around America.\u00a0 Why Charlottesville was chosen as their point of conglomeration was a small question I had, but given the obvious answer that such a demonstration would never have been able to fly in Northern Virginia, where they\u2019d have been eaten alive by the vast mixing bowl of the region, with the same sentiment being similar in the Commonwealth\u2019s capital of Richmond.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My friends and I have laughed about how this would only have ended in tragic-ironic gun violence if it happened in the next largest populace of the Virginia Beach-Tidewater region, which has very large black communities with many notorious gang issues, whom would probably love to band together to oppose a bunch of white supremacists, so it pretty much left Charlottesville, home to the University of Virginia as the only logical place to gather and blather on about white-this and white-that and all their stupid shit that they somehow think is remotely acceptable in 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t get over the irony in that Charlottesville is the place where I learned Korean, a language not belonging to whitey, is also a place where large numbers of angry white bigots gathered to light tiki torches and chant about their supposed dying culture.\u00a0 Obviously, it\u2019s not so much a reflection of Charlottesville itself, as much as it is the unfortunate choice of gathering of a bunch of racists, but that\u2019s how history works; Charlottesville is a site where hatred gathered, boiled over, and became national news.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I could go on about more ironies and tragedies about the whole situation, but they\u2019d be nothing anyone hasn\u2019t read or heard on any other news outlet, real or allegedly fake.\u00a0 What made me feel like writing is something more of an internal result that has been seeded, on account of the things I\u2019ve witnessed happening in Charlottesville.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really feel like I trust white people anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n

Granted, I have tremendous trust issues to begin with, and I can\u2019t really say that I trusted white people that much to begin with.\u00a0 But I also didn\u2019t trust black people, Hispanic people, other Asian people, and especially my fellow Koreans, whom I felt were some of the worst perpetrators of farming false trust to take advantage of, especially towards other Koreans, preferably of the older generations.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the brazen actions of a large group of white people in Charlottesville now kind of makes me look at all other white people in a different light these days.\u00a0 Primarily on account of how fearlessly they marched, protested and acted on violent tendencies, without remotely feeling the need to protect their identities or hide their faces.\u00a0 This is who they are, not caring if everyone on site or with cameras and recording video could see their faces.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sure, lots of these unmasked white folks are facing the wrath of the internet, getting doxed and exposed here and there, which is a whole other argument in itself, but none of it really changes the fact that these bigots are completely unconcerned about other people knowing that they are not a fan of those people around them that are not white like them.<\/span><\/p>\n

What this does to me is it now puts just about all white people I don\u2019t know in a light of question: are they potentially white supremacists as well?\u00a0 It might be a little unfair sure, but the thing is the events in Charlottesville sort of validate a lot of those concerns.\u00a0 Based on how fast some of these guys have been identified, these are all people who are from communities that have some semblance of minority communities in them.\u00a0 People are looking at their faces, and some are recognizing them, and are probably pretty surprised to see them at white supremacy rallies.\u00a0 Maybe they don\u2019t care who knows that this is how they feel, or perhaps they really are that stupid?<\/span><\/p>\n

The thing is, I can\u2019t help but feel like, in spite of how large these white supremacist Nazi shithead groups were in Charlottesville, I\u2019d wager that this was only a slice of the likeminded people that exist in America.\u00a0 Maybe other bigots couldn\u2019t afford the cost of travel or the time necessary to represent in Charlottesville, or perhaps they were just smarter to not put themselves in harm\u2019s way.\u00a0 But now, I\u2019m going around imagining that there are still lots and lots of white folks out there concealing prejudices, disguising their disdain, and harboring hatred out there, whether they\u2019re making it public or not.<\/span><\/p>\n

But for what it\u2019s worth, the events of Charlottesville have definitely damaged by trust in the white community.\u00a0 Which is pretty shitty, considering all of my white friends, my white girlfriend and the oft-accusations I get for being white-washed. \u00a0But I can\u2019t change what I look like, which is that of an Asian person, and that that fact alone is going to make some hateful people out there hate me for no other reason than that I\u2019m not white.\u00a0 And I\u2019d rather be a little jaded and prepared for the worst, than to naively assume that just because a person isn\u2019t actively trying to inflict harm or discriminating me directly, that they might not hate me secretly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is it fair to all the people around me that I might not trust them?\u00a0 Absolutely not.\u00a0 I know not everyone is a bigot.\u00a0 But to strangers and people I don\u2019t really know, the jury is perpetually out.\u00a0 But it\u2019s also not fair to minorities that we\u2019re living in a country built on equality, opportunity and the American Dream to assume we won\u2019t have some manner of guard always up in a country where people gather, unapologetically and unafraid to spread their message of blatant discrimination and hatred for those not like them.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is what Charlottesville has done to me.\u00a0 I can\u2019t speak for anyone but myself, but I don\u2019t believe for a second that this isn\u2019t what it has probably done to many other people as well.\u00a0 It sucks, most definitely, but as long as shit like this happens, even in the \u201ccivilized\u201d year of 2017, those of who aren\u2019t white will always, have to have their guard up.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not often I want to go back to a major topical event, but admittedly, I\u2019m having a hard time letting this one go.\u00a0 It\u2019s on the tongue of every news outlet, and even in the endlessly flowing stream of social media, it\u2019s still a hot topic that is still the talk of the town.\u00a0 … Continue reading What Charlottesville has done to me<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[176,52,89,27],"class_list":["post-45188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-murica","tag-owned","tag-racism","tag-virginia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45190,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45188\/revisions\/45190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}