reretroregressions Aryan Ashraf, 2021
On Friday, August 11th, 2017, at 8:45 PM, something happened in the Nameless Field near the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America. About 250 young white men, clad in polo shirts and khaki pants, holding up lit kerosene tiki torches from Home Depot, organized in pairs, walked militantly in a line and marched the area.
Then, the counter-protestors came. Then, the slurs began. Then, the rocks were thrown. Then, the clubs were used. Then, Saturday came. Then, larger groups appeared on both sides. Then, the violence escalated to an all out riot. Then, a Dodge Challenger drove directly into a crowd, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others.
They yelled what you expect: “You will not replace us!” “Jews will not replace us!” “White lives matter!” Honestly, this could have been comical. A bunch of white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, KKK members, and every other rancid brand of racist, elitist white male collected together in no place other than Virginia, in front of a statue of iconic slave owner Thomas Jefferson, wearing none other than the preppiest of privileged, coddled white-boy clothes — polo shirts and khakis.
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And it just could not be funny anymore. I was a freshman in high school when this happened. I was just starting the school year. I felt a lot of things. As a Bangladeshi-American, as a brown boy, as a child of immigrants, as a Muslim, I often found myself, at many times in my life, the only one who looked like me in a room. Though, I can say, fortunately, despite growing up in Georgia and the infamous Bible Belt, I have rarely come face to face with a racist, xenophobe, or Islamophobe or, at least, have rarely come face to face with an outspoken one. But, I won’t say that my experience was perfect. Since I would be the only one
