Erasure

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Candace Owens led an interesting discussion around the attempted erasure of ancestry. Cue the Cracker Barrel controversy. (Truly one of my favorite places to be. I heavily considered planning a wedding party there).

“It’s a spiritual attack on the idea of ancestry. Nothing can be old. Everything must be new. They want everybody to look the same; there will be no personality in anything. They will turn us into AI bots— [this] is actually the explicit goal. You may not realize that. […] Even the way they are making homes. It’s ugly. Everything is ugly. There is a reason for that. They don’t want you to think that structures existed. They want you to think you are just floating through the wind and nothing matters. Your family doesn’t matter; ancestry doesn’t matter. Everything yesterday is gone.” Candace Owens

As I heard her say this, I was reminded of a conversation I had recently along the same themes, except my conversation had to do with government and political erasure of ethnicity, language and family history/culture in colonialism and communism. Owens’ description could fit into a description of communism as well. Modern society mirrors some of communism’s absurdities. Truly.

Differences carry identity, power and strength. They give identity outside of politics. They are a threat to desperate power. They are complicated to navigate. This is why systems seek their erasure. The human default is to always seek what is convenient or easy.

Owens described those who protested the Cracker Barrel logo and aesthetic as those who recognized it has been a year of “some BS.” And no, we are not over the Epstein files situation.

Owens calls this the “Plantation of sameness.”

She continued saying, society’s message is:

“We are getting rid of AP classes; there will be no honors classes; no test scores. We aren’t even gonna track how stupid we are making your kids, anymore.”

I talk about this societal decline with my husband all the time.

It’s easy to make erasure seem virtuous and to keep groups of people down by having them feel like victims. If you are going to win in life, victimhood can’t be your only identity. It’s time minorities understand this, and celebrate their true identities and the strength one finds within that. A positive identity is strength.

This is a unique country that is a mosaic of culture. The future should not be the erasure of the unique identities or the division of those identities. It should be a unity while standing in our differences. Isn’t that the great American experiment? The freedom to remain who you are while coming together under one flag and set of universal moral virtues?

Owens is right, the people said you are not getting rid of the old man sitting next to the barrel. No one was more outraged than Southerners— the warmest people this country has to offer. They made corporate bow down after making them lose millions.

People on all ends are tired of erasure and the demonization of our differences. Cracker Barrel united Americans. We know who we are, and that won’t be erased. You can’t give us some generic Denny’s aesthetic. As one meme said during the controversy— give us hoarding memaw or nothing.

Cracker Barrel embodies American principles— rural grit, family and excess. The threat of its erasure was a reminder that every piece of the mosaic counts, and it makes up this great flag.