Dear White Guys With Torches

Dear White Guys With Torches,

We see you. We see your angry, happy faces. Despite your lack of white robes, you look very much like every other group of racists we've seen before. Strangely joy-filled--defiant in your racism--white. And now your picture will be forever associated with hatred, with racism, with misbehavior of a privileged group and their angry petulance when their oppression stops working. We will see your faces in museums (very much like we see the faces of people breaking the windows of Jewish people and throwing them into trucks, the faces of men and women screaming at a 6 year old girl as she made her way to school). Your racism and hatred are immortalized now. And you and your children will have to bear that--that you were there, that this was the choice you made, that you stood up for hatred and violence, that you let your fear and anger control you and cared so little about other people that you would join this mob in Charlottesville.

To those in Charlottesville who stood for love yesterday, in so many ways, know that we see you too. We see the cakes that you put in your store window which said "Black Lives Matter" and spread other messages of love. We see your clergy, who gathered with you to stand against hatred. We see how hard that was, to face that virulent hatred, to put your body in harm's way, to submit yourself to evil so that you could be the face of love. We're grateful for each one of you, as well as to those who have stood there before in other places, facing off with fellow citizens who deny your humanity, standing together in as much peace as you can muster in the middle of such violence.

To the rest of the white people who were not seen yesterday, have not been seen at any point in the process of dismantling racism, you should know that your absence is noted. There is no middle ground in this--no Switzerland. You are counted with one group, or you are counted with the other. The reason for this is that white people have permitted systemic racism for centuries. This is the cost of our sin: we do not get to be neutral. It is time to choose. You either agree with those torch-bearing boys in Charlottesville, or you do not. Time to speak up, time to be counted. Be certain, we remember your absence when that little girl walked to school. We see the empty space around her where no white people showed up to stand between her and hatred. And those of us willing to stand are looking for you in the crowd--and we're counting.