It’s time to face it: something is deeply and systematically broken in this country. Something we need to fix before it destroys the soul and devours the body of the nation itself.
There is a new widow in Minnesota this morning, a young woman with five children, now a widow after agents of the state murdered her husband as she looked on. I don’t have to tell you she’s Black, you knew that the moment you heard the news. Didn’t have to think about it probably. By now you’ve seen the video too. I have, and I’m sick to my stomach.
That is our normal. There is no if in that sentence or the reality it describes.
I can’t find anything to say. What is there to say? I’m sorry? Never again? Black Lives Matter?
Of course you’re sorry, I’m sorry too, everyone is. And what of it? This does what exactly? Nothing at all, that’s what.
Never again? Really? When we all know there are more young widows to come? We’ve tried that before, how’d it work out?
Black Lives Matter? Yes they do, as much as mine and yours. They matter with all the fierce urgency of life itself. Except we just saw – again – how much a Black life matters.
Like we saw yesterday in Baton Rouge. And the place before that, and that before it and so on. I can’t even say the names anymore, there are too god-damned many.
Until this ends, until Americans stop murdering one another for the color of their skin or some other ultimately trivial thing, the only word that describes us as a whole and perfectly is just that: shame.
Would that we had any.