On nostalgia,
fear, and the divisions that threaten our communities, and our nation.
A few years back,
I got back in touch with one of my favorite elementary school teachers (who
shall remain nameless for what will be obvious reasons), and he/she connected
me to a Facebook group named “You Know You’re From
Charlottesville.” At first I was very excited to join the group, and to see
the memories, stories, and historic photos of the city that its members shared
and commented on. But it quickly became apparent that the group (led by that
former teacher of mine) spent at least as much time doing two distinct but
deeply interconnected things: expressing pro-Confederate versions of
the Civil War and related histories; and waxing nostalgic about what had once
been the case in Charlottesville, before “carpetbagger”
recent politicians, immigration and diversification, and other late 20th
and early 21st century trends had irrevocably changed the place. Way
too much “I
want my country back!” for me; I regretfully left the group and my former
teacher behind.
Some of those
narratives—the fears
about carpetbaggers, the worries that some
sort of “authentic” South is slipping away and must
be reclaimed—go way back in regional and American history, of course. But I
would nonetheless argue that these contemporary conversations reflect a
significant and growing set of 21st century American fears, ones
that I would have to connect to (among other things) both the Tea Party and the
resurgence of racism in our communal debates. To cite another anecdotal
observation from Facebook, I’ve been struck by how many of the white
Charlottesvillians with whom I went to school frequently post stories about
crimes committed (or allegedly committed) by African Americans; the debacle
over a so-called “knockout game” attack on the city’s Downtown Mall earlier
this year is a case in point. These pseudo-racist posts are almost always
linked both to nostalgia (“How did our city turn into this?”) and other contemporary
political narratives (“This is what happens when we create a class of
irresponsible people dependent on the government,” for example). And they
appear with striking regularity.
Charlottesville
has indeed changed demographically, as I wrote in yesterday’s post—although the
changes in communities like Cville have to my mind (and as I’ve argued
extensively) only better reflected throughout the country our overarching, foundational
national histories
of diversity and multiculturalism. Moreover, it’s this other kind of change
that bothers me—the change toward a more overtly divided and antagonist
communal identity, one in which even many younger folks express nostalgia for
racially or culturally regressive (and often mythological) identities. Racism
and xenophobia and fear aren’t new on the American landscape, of course—but I’ve
seen them reemerge in conversations around and about my hometown in ways that
at once belie and yet are directly tied to 21st century progress. If
we don’t find ways to bridge these gaps, to remind all Americans of the
histories and stories—in places like Charlottesville as much as anywhere—that we
share, it’s hard to feel that our cities and our nation can move toward a
better and more unified future.
That special
festival post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. So what do
you think? Hometown stories you’d share?
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