The Charlottesville Victim's Parents Gave Powerful Interviews About Their Daughter's Life and Purpose

Jack Holmes
Updated
Photo credit: NBC
Photo credit: NBC

From Esquire

It should be repeated, again and again: A white supremacist allegedly murdered an anti-racist protester on the streets of an American city this weekend because she opposed his white power rally. Heather Heyer was just 32-years-old when she died Saturday. She had friends, family, and parents who are still here. Her mother, Susan Bro, is still here, and gave an interview to NBC News just one day after she lost her daughter. Her strength, courage, and grace under the circumstances was simply staggering:

This is not just a remembrance of someone as a loving child, or a good person. It is a fierce vindication of her questioning mind, of her relentless pursuit of justice, of her deep empathy. Bro says it was frustrating at times to have a child who refused to accept things as they were, or as her parents told her they were. There had to be a reason, and it had to be compatible with her worldview where true equality was an uncompromising standard. This is no everyday eulogy. It is a call to arms for all of us.

Heyer's father echoed that in his own interview. He even urged forgiveness-and began that process by forgiving his daughter's alleged killer. "I'm proud of her," he said. "She had more courage than I did. She had a stubborn backbone, that if she thought she was right, she would stand there and defy you. But if I understand her, she wanted to do it peacefully, with a fierceness of heart that comes with her conviction."

Heyer went to that rally to demand answers from the white supremacists who don't have any, really. Their arguments are not based in reality. They are not reflected in the world around them. They are based in a mass delusion in this country, which holds that white people are the group that is truly discriminated against, despite the fact that 80 percent of the national legislature is white and white households hold 13 times more wealth than black ones. It is a cultivated white resentment unmoored from the real world, whose most extreme adherents now feel empowered to take to the streets in a show of force. One allegedly even felt empowered to kill people. Heather Heyer asked why, and we all keep asking until we get an answer.

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