I’ve been trying to force my thoughts on Samuel Dubose (REMEMBER HIS NAME) to coalesce into some semblance of coherence. Here are the words that have aligned along the fault lines of my confusion. Over the past two years, I have watched with growing bemusement and horror at the absurdity with which institutionalized racism plays out on black bodies in the United States. And with each death, beating and unjustified arrest, I think to myself maybe this time things will not be so absurd. Perhaps this time it is clear: he was a twelve year old kid, he was going to start college in a few days, he had his back turned while he ran for his life, she was merely irritated, she didn’t run fast enough to please the officer. Yet each time is really no different. It will begin with a massive welling of emotion. Overwhelming grief and anger and visceral fear from those who possess bodies that the continuing violence of racism might visit at any moment. Opposed by waves of indignation from those who would seek to quiet the real threat to life that is omnipresent. And last, but perhaps worst, the madness inducing silence from those whose voices could help move the gears with which to make change.

Absurdity apexed on the 17th of June when a white man walked into a black sanctuary, sat in pretend communion with black worshippers and in awful mimicry of the divine, willfully took of nine of their lives. He left unscathed and in the days that followed, he was identified as the “alleged” shooter. Very quickly we learned the contours of his life. We learned of the things that troubled him and of his black friends. We had his humanity laid out quite clear in our collective imaginary. Which is how it should be. Efforts should be made to understand and humanize those who have acted out the impulses of the worst demons that lie hidden even in the best of us. But absurdity rears its head again when finding the names of the black people he saw fit to annul, was left to the diligent who would go searching. In case you do not already know their names.

Daniel Simmons (REMEMBER HIS NAME)

Susie Jackson (REMEMBER HER NAME)

Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd (REMEMBER HER NAME)

Ethel Lee Lance (REMEMBER HER NAME)

Clementa C. Pinckney (REMEMBER HIS NAME)

Tywanza Sanders (REMEMBER HIS NAME)

Depayne Middleton-Doctor (REMEMBER HER NAME)

Sharonda Coleman-Singleton (REMEMBER HER NAME)

Myra Thompson (REMEMBER HER NAME)

That had to be the peak of the absurdity, but racism knows no seventh day. There would go on to be a debate about the merits of a treasonous flag under which white men had rallied to fight for the continued use of black (wo)men as beings equivalent of a pack mule but somehow deserving of less sympathy than a slain lion half the world away. The longest operating terrorist group in the world would be allowed to convene on state property to protest the removal of a symbol that still represents the fight against the recognition of dark skinned humans as equal humans. I cannot even begin to dissect what I felt and what I still feel about all that, save that there is a burning overwhelming anger married tightly to the desire to laugh at the sheer farce. And weariness. If you still believe that there is some orchestrator, and have not long ago come to the conclusion that the realities of black life in United States are so absurd, they must be the result of an evil sense of humor bent on peeling back the bounds of reality, then you are of much greater faith and long-suffering than I can ever aspire to.