“I’ve got this bad habit.” I’m twisting the cold wine-glass stem around in circles, leaving marks on the tablecloth. “I can never finish sucking the mint. You know? I always crush it in my teeth.”
The man looks at me through wire-rimmed glasses, a bit of goo in the corner of his brown eye.
In the aftermath of a white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville, VA and the resulting mess of presidential statements that came in the days following, many are rushing to align themselves on the right side of history. While some attend rallies in solidarity or rush the removal of the remaining Confederate monuments across the US, others have chosen to hide their relative inaction by claiming only ‘love’ can defeat ‘hate’ all across social media. Such feel-good rhetoric does double duty as it allows the user to feel assured in their spot on the hypothetical spectrum of history while relieving them of any responsibility to address the very real oppression, violence, and hatred in communities that surround them.
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