The Southernization of America by Frye Gaillard and Cynthia Tucker

Author:Frye Gaillard and Cynthia Tucker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NewSouth Books
Published: 2022-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTS lasted through the summer of 2020. White, black, and brown people gathered in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Louisville, and Portland. They gathered in small towns and rural communities, from 4S Ranch, California, to Woburn, Massachusetts, from Taylorville, Illinois, to Aledo, Texas. They gathered in London, Nairobi, Kyoto, Warsaw, Stockholm, Paris, Buenos Aires, and Bogota. Protests took place in more than sixty cities on all seven continents.

While the demonstrations were overwhelmingly peaceful, some were accompanied by sporadic violence (often when white supremacist counter-protestors got involved). Trump tried to use those incidents not only to smear the entire BLM protest movement but also to gin up fear among the white voters he needed to salvage his reelection campaign that was faltering in part because of his disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The president’s most dramatic attempt to portray himself as the white savior of besieged white citizens backfired spectacularly. On June 1, 2020, as a peaceful crowd of thousands of BLM protestors gathered across from the White House, Trump decided to project an image of strength by removing the protestors by the forceful use of several federal law enforcement agencies and National Guard troops. Snipers were stationed on rooftops as helicopters circled overhead. Police and soldiers released tear gas and flash-bang grenades on the stunned crowd. Protestors were left choking, coughing, and running.

As the chaos cleared, Trump—never a churchgoer—walked triumphantly across Lafayette Square to St. John’s Episcopal Church, accompanied by several officials, including combat fatigues-wearing General Mark Milley, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When Trump arrived in front of the church, he held up a Bible handed to him by his daughter for what he believed would be the perfect photo-op.

But images of troops shoving, clubbing, and chasing peaceful demonstrators drew outrage not only from Democrats but from a few Republicans, who noted that the misbegotten affair resembled a scene from a banana republic. Representing a military culture that is emphatic about its duty to remain outside partisan politics, Milley later apologized for his involvement in the spectacle.

Trump, however, was undeterred. In his search for cultural scapegoats, he soon picked Bubba Wallace, the only African American driver competing at the highest level of NASCAR. On June 10, 2020, in a race at Martinsville, Virginia, Wallace, a native of Mobile, Alabama, drove a car with a Black Lives Matter decal on the rear quarter panel, and a black hand clasping a white one on the hood. He also pushed NASCAR to prohibit the display of Confederate flags at its races—a long-time tradition among the mostly white crowds who populated the infields at historic racetracks like those in Darlington, South Carolina, or Talladega, Alabama.

When NASCAR agreed to the flag ban, beginning in July at Talladega, Wallace and his team were treated to a chilling sight. The pull rope on their garage stall at the Talladega track had been fashioned into a hangman’s noose. Notwithstanding the racial implications, the FBI concluded that the noose had been

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