I’m curious, dear reader, what thoughts come to mind when you look at this image, one of the many unsettling scenes from the events in Charlottesville last weekend. This particular image is burned into my memory, yet I realize we may interpret it in vastly different ways. Our president refers to one of the individuals in the photo as a “very fine” person. The other, however, is my son.
One of these individuals had a “permit” to protest the removal of Confederate symbols while shouting “Jews will not replace us!” Meanwhile, the other was “also very violent.” According to our president, there are “multiple sides” to this situation.
Indeed, there are layers to this narrative: this image doesn’t show the banner that my son and his friends held, which proclaimed, “The Confederacy Lost and So Will You.” That detail is absent because it infuriated the man in the makeshift riot gear, who snatched the banner from their hands, seized my son by the shirt, and began striking him with a baton.
The photo fails to capture the moments after, when this man stumbled, allowing my son to wrest the baton away from him and retaliate. There’s a YouTube video of this confrontation, which I have chosen not to watch; I already have enough vivid images swirling in my mind as a concerned mother. The person filming took in the chaotic scene of bodies and fury, then pivoted to record the fight—the last 20 seconds in which my son strikes back at a “very fine” person with a stick.
If our president ever views that footage, I suspect that’s all he would see, the only narrative his supporters would acknowledge. “Look at the violent left,” they would proclaim, and suddenly my son would be rebranded as the embodiment of their moral equivalency; the face of their “violence on all sides” mantra. Now that I’ve foolishly aired this online, I can only imagine a troll is already concocting some image that links my son to an Antifa logo, sharing it with captions like “See?! See?” and implying that my child—and the late Heather Heyer—somehow deserved this.
In my heart, I see my son through the lens of a proud mother who urged him not to attend the rally. I wish everyone would recognize his bravery. But then, on Tuesday, when the president again labeled the protesters as radical alt-left and suggested that the “very fine” man with the stick had justifiable reasons for his actions, I felt a surge of rage. A spectrum of emotions washed over me: blood-red, molten lava red, MAGA-hat red.
“But how can you blame Trump?” his followers ask during our futile Facebook debates, and we find ourselves staring at screens in disbelief, unable to agree on what should be clear. “How can anyone be so blind?” we wonder. I’m uncertain what kind of corrective lenses could help those unwilling to see the truth.
I wasn’t present in Charlottesville, but I can’t forget this much: the “very fine” man wielded a stick, while my son carried historical context. Our president and his supporters can choose to ignore this fact, squint and look away, or hastily fabricate an alternative narrative. However, even if Trump remains blind to it, the rest of the GOP would do well to acknowledge the unwavering truth displayed on the yellow banner held by brave individuals who refuse to back down. Racist policies, Confederate symbols, and Jim Crow statues lost their standing in the eyes of the American public long ago. Ignore this obvious reality, and you will also face defeat.
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