PUBLISHED: August 25, 2017
Following the deadly white-supremacist rally on August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia, we asked three writers to share their thoughts on the causes and consequences of that weekend and take a closer look at its impact on the local community, the culture of the University of Virginia, and the larger, fraught narrative of race in America.
Triumph of the Wills
by W. Ralph Eubanks
Last weekend, a friend posted images of Oxford in 1962 and Charlottesville in 2017 side by side with the caption “The names have changed, but the racism remains the same.”
A Basket of Replaceables
by Peter Trachtenberg
All the time I was watching the young white fascists rioting in Charlottesville, I kept thinking, Those losers.
#Charlottesville
by John Edwin Mason
It’s an odd thing, seeing your town become a hashtag. By the evening of August 12, 2017, millions of social media users, in the United States and around the world, recognized #Charlottesville as a metonym for violence and death.
