on the First Amendment.

Like many of you, I’ve been grappling all day with what occurred in South Carolina. As a general rule, I try not to draw too many conclusions from what I read/see in/on the news, only because I’m well aware of how “processed” such information is before I am its recipient. I’m also reluctant to indulge knee-jerk reactions, since they are most often the culprit to unintended (and sometimes costly) consequences.

Of course, the aforementioned “knee-jerk” entailed something akin to “burn all the damn Confederate flags ever, hang the terrorist, round up all the guns, and never ever set one toenail in the South ever again.” Jon Stewart stated in his now viral remarks on the tragedy (when is his stuff not viral?) that, no pun intended, this is “black and white.” Dylann Roof has admitted that he “almost” didn’t shoot his victims, because they were “so nice” to him. His friends have indicated that beyond a few off-color jokes, Dylann never showed signs of violent racism. In the end, it was his very own sister who turned him in.

These are just some of the facts that have been rolling around my head this morning like a handful of aggravating marbles. I simply don’t know what to make of all of this. On the one hand, my impulse to write-off this kid, the stupid flag, all guns, and about half of our country seems totally legit and amply supported by social media. But, as I said, I feel like doing so would risk being as backwards as the bigoted refrain underlying Mr. Roof’s campaign.

I am, and always have been, a staunch proponent of the First Amendment. I believe in the freedom of speech–not solely because I enjoy the ability to say what I want when I want and how I want. I believe that the suppression of free speech is the single greatest threat to the eradication of racism. In some respects, a society aimed at unearthing its evils must be prepared to let it surface. You see, we shame people into hiding their racist speech. The pendulum of political correctness has swung so far, hate speech has been positively skewered by it. And many may think this is a good thing.

But, the absence of hate speech is not equivalent to the absence of hate.

By sterilizing our rhetoric, we have tricked ourselves into believing that we’ve come a “long way” since our parents’ generation. Just the other day, as I was pulling up to the federal courthouse, I thought to myself, “Wow. 40 years ago? There woulda been no Asian female lawyers rolling into court in her Louboutin’s.” That’s very true. However, 40 years from now, will we still have cops shooting unarmed African American men to death? Will we still have young white men who are groomed to see diversity as adulteration? Will we still be shivering within the long shadow cast by this country’s history of racial violence? Only, we will, of course, have replaced the words “African American” or “cop” or “white” or “racial violence” with something even more “correct” and further removed from their intended signified.

So, I ask myself, will requiring South Carolina to take down what is indisputably an homage to the most sickening and horrific chapters of our nation’s history really do anything more than disguise an illness that has thus remained uncured? I hate looking at that flag as much as you do–but every single fucking time I saw that damn thing while I was driving around North Carolina, it reminded me that the Great United States of America was not nearly as great as it should be.

And, that I, a woman of color dating a white man, was not as safe as I had beguiled myself into believing.

Many of my family members once regularly used the term “f–.” It alerted me to the fact that not all of my family members saw eye-to-eye with me when it came to gay rights–a fact that was and remains important. But, asking them not to use the term in front of me corrected their speech, not their hearts. This is usually where I come to a full-stop: free speech is good because it encourages evildoers to reveal themselves to us before they go on a killing spree.

But…that is not where I stopped today. The problem is that the State’s stubborn refusal to raze the scepter of slavery and generational hatred is–without question–an implicit endorsement of the same. The State seems to be under the delusion that its intention (i.e., “it’s just about Southern heritage y’all!”) can somehow control its reception. Just as shouting “FIRE” into a crowded movie theater as a joke will cause rampant pandemonium, the gonging echoes of “Southern Heritage” will no doubt continue to embolden the desperate and the deranged. They see that flag as a silent license, a “nod of the head” as powerful as the rifles with which they are so readily equipped.

So, should we start arresting people who brand their skin with the swastika or drape themselves in the “rebel flag”? Absolutely not. It is as imperative as ever that hate mongers feel “free” to express their hatred, so that we can stomp it out at its source. But should the State be held accountable for the violence it incites by flying that flag, proud and in-your-face, on capital grounds?

Absolutely.