{"id":1581,"date":"2018-01-30T21:57:46","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T21:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/?p=1581"},"modified":"2018-01-31T21:01:36","modified_gmt":"2018-01-31T21:01:36","slug":"controversy-at-the-capitol-discussing-racism-with-your-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/2018\/01\/30\/controversy-at-the-capitol-discussing-racism-with-your-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Controversy at the Capitol: Discussing racism with your children"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written and Photographed by Ursula A. Perano<\/p>\n

January 27th<\/sup>, 2018<\/p>\n

A rally by the League of the South, a self-described southern nationalist group, ignited counterdemonstrations Saturday at the foot of Florida\u2019s Historic Capitol.<\/p>\n

The organization has operated for nearly a quarter of a century, and has maintained an image of being built on white-supremacist and neo-confederate beliefs. The League and its leadership have come out against interracial marriage, argued that ethnocentrism is \u201cboth healthy and biblical,\u201d claimed that antebellum slavery was \u201cGod-ordained,\u201d and declared that segregation is needed to maintain the \u201cintegrity\u201d of both races.<\/p>\n

In recent months, the group has gained particularly increased attention for having partnered in the deadly \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Several of the participants in the Tallahassee rally were also present at that occasion.<\/p>\n

Claiming 15,000 members throughout chapters in six former Confederate states, the League of the South seeks to convert individual southern states into sovereign republics. Railing against the \u201cleviathan federal government,\u201d the Florida chapter aims to establish independence for the state in order to provide \u201cliberty and prosperity for the people,\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Michael Hill on the far left holding a neo-confederate flag<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Michael Hill, the group\u2019s national president, said that the purpose of the rally was to spread the organization\u2019s message of standing for \u201cthe survival, wellbeing and independence of the Southern people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill believes that he is fighting for his family\u2019s Southern heritage. \u201cMy people created the greatest civilization the world has ever known,\u201d he said. \u201cI feel like if my generation doesn\u2019t do something, that that\u2019s going to disappear and they\u2019re going to end up a hated minority in the country that their ancestors built. And I am not going to allow that to happen if I can do anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked whether slaves built the South, Hill remarked, \u201cThat would be like saying that mules plowed a field. The mules provided the energy, but the mules don\u2019t know about plowing the field. They just do what they\u2019re told to do.\u201d (More on Michael Hill from the Southern Poverty Law Center)<\/a><\/p>\n

Throughout the event, law enforcement greeted visitors by immediately asking them what section they were looking to stand with \u2013 one contained the League of the South\u2019s members and two contained counterdemonstrators. Officers stood forming a barrier between the parties, and would not allow the disagreeing sides to cross into each other\u2019s spaces. The League had roughly two-dozen participants in their area, and the two protesting sections likely totaled over a hundred contributors.<\/p>\n

Driving down Monroe Street alongside blaring megaphones, enraged faces and gyrating signs reading \u201cDenonunce White Terrorism\u201d and \u201cNazi Scum\u201d, many parents undoubtedly fielded backseat questions about all the commotion. Bringing forth the question that every family, regardless of ideology, must face: How do you explain racism to your children?<\/p>\n

This is what a few mothers and fathers in attendance at the rally had to say:<\/p>\n

John Welch, Father<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
John Welch and his son<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u201cPeople are stupid and have too much time on their hands. That\u2019s literally how it was explained to me. My dad said, \u2018If you\u2019ve got enough time to hate people just because they\u2019re black, women whatever, you\u2019ve got too much time on your hands and you need to do more work.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was kind of a pragmatic answer, because there\u2019s no good answer, because you have to start going into people who grew up really insular. They don\u2019t get exposed to a lot of other people. I mean, you don\u2019t see a lot of people going full white supremacist, full KKK in New York, Chicago, larger cities, Miami. I grew up in Miami. So, it\u2019s a matter of you\u2019re just not exposed to a lot of things, and your world view kind of shrinks down, and if all you ever hear is the same thing over and over and over again you\u2019re kind of stuck with that. It\u2019s hard to expand your viewpoint if you don\u2019t have any chance to.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at a lot of literature and stuff like that from the white supremacist movement, they couch it very carefully. It\u2019s well written propaganda, it\u2019s not crude crap like it was in the 60s or the 70s. Nowadays it\u2019s become very sophisticated, they start manipulating crime statistics for example, things like that, cherry picking, and if you\u2019re not of the bent when somebody quotes a statistic to go \u2018Where\u2019s your source data?\u2019, if that\u2019s not the person you are, then it\u2019s really easy to believe it. Because you go, \u201cWell, look. That\u2019s a statistic.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Louise Ritchie, Mother <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Louise Ritchie with her boyfriend<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

I talked to them about it, but I guess mainly by letting them realize that it was the other people\u2019s problem, not their problem. You know that it\u2019s unfortunate that some people are like that, but it\u2019s not a reflection on them. I mean I really didn\u2019t spend a lot of time explaining racism to them, I tried to make them happy with who they were, and I always exposed them to a diverse group of people and was real clear that I wasn\u2019t anti any group of people. You know, racially, religion, country of origin, sexual orientation. So, it was mainly by showing them that I welcomed people of all kinds. And I had to talk to them about dangers. But a lot times I didn\u2019t even say this is because you\u2019re black, because I grew up in a predominantly white area my mother was always saying, \u2018Because you\u2019re black, blah, blah, blah,\u2019 and that was awful. I mean it\u2019s true, but it\u2019d be very difficult.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a burden to tell kids \u2018People may hate you because you\u2019re black. People may do this and this.\u2019 I can remember things that I knew happened because my kid was black. One example, my kids had SAT scores, both of them that were 98th<\/sup>, 99th<\/sup> percentile. They were brilliant. But, they were both underperformers. They\u2019re 2.5 to 3.0 students \u2013 brilliant. But I remember one time, my younger son was in high school, they had this program of stopping everybody – it was one of the elite programs, it was actually IB – they had them stopping all the kids to see their report cards. He showed her his, and his had his usual mediocre grades, and she complimented him. And he knew at that moment if he had been white she would not have been complimenting him for that piss-poor report card. She would have been saying, \u2018Why the hell aren\u2019t you getting all A\u2019s?\u2019. So, that type of thing happened.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stevie Fenton, Mother and Former Teacher<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>\u201cWell, it\u2019s not like we give it a name like that for the young ones. We talk about kindness, we talk about the opposite, and that every person has something that another person might not like, and that it\u2019s kindness to everybody in the room. When they start getting older and they maybe say something, or they report something that somebody else says, it\u2019s empathy teaching. It\u2019s looking at what is going on for that other person, and we start pointing out differences, or I started pointing out differences, to say that\u2019s different, but it\u2019s not wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the absolute vile stuff happened, I talked about how sad I was, how I felt bad for the victims \u2013 again, empathy, kindness. That consequences and accountability for the perpetrator are important, but that that person is still a human. That we have to respect the humanhood, but hold them accountable for their actions. So, the word racism will come up in that conversation, but it\u2019s not what we start out with.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The rally ended peacefully, and no participants were physically harmed in the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written and Photographed by Ursula A. Perano January 27th, 2018 A rally by the League of the South, a self-described southern nationalist group, ignited counterdemonstrations Saturday at the foot of Florida\u2019s Historic Capitol. The organization has operated for nearly a quarter of a century, and has maintained an image of being built on white-supremacist and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,455,4,1,340],"tags":[466,467,465,468],"class_list":["post-1581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-family","category-politics","category-uncategorized","category-web","tag-equality","tag-interracial","tag-march","tag-protests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1581"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1594,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581\/revisions\/1594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}