Reflection on Charleston Church Massacre

Wednesday, driving through South Carolina, I was pulled over by a cop. Everything went fine. About an hour after the interaction I stopped feeling sick and everything seemed to be going back to normal. No big deal. Life went on.

Today, I was driving from Savannah to Durham and I was listening to Russ Parr talk about the Charleston church shootings. At one point in the show, Russ Parr was so upset, he went off script and was venting at the senselessness and the horror of the murders. Just raw, unplanned emotion.

Over the past few days, I had seen the news and kept up in excruciating detail; the same way I’ve followed each event where Black people are assaulted and murdered. I’ve even developed a routine for these types of events: Read articles, piece together facts, search out opinions. Local news, twitter, networks, social media. I, like many other people, have a system for following these tragedies.

As I listened to the distraught Russ Parr I thought back to what actually happened Wednesday when I was pulled over.

I tried to start the tape recorder on my phone, but my hands were too shaky. I frantically looked in the front seat to make sure my bookbag and other belongings were in plain sight. I checked my mirrors looking for mile markers and potential witnesses. My heart pounded and felt like it was going to jump out of my chest. Somehow I had completely forgotten that entire incident.

I then realized that at no point did I feel sad, mad or upset, angry or depressed, or any type of emotion over the shootings in Charleston. I had unintentionally, yet successfully, replaced my feelings with my routine. It was easier that way.

I began to cry. At the anger I felt at myself for being panicked at a police stop. At the magnitude of pain felt by so many Black men and women over the past year. At the feeling of feeling terrorized in my own home. And at my withering ability to feel any of it.

I felt the need to pray and turned the car around and headed to Charleston. I had no plans to organize, no plans to engage people, no plans to be a part of a larger movement. I needed to go just for myself.

People will use this event to debate policies — and I have no doubt that there are plenty of policies that need to be changed — but this event isn’t about that. It’s not about a radical individual. It’s not about gun control. It’s not about parenting. It’s not about mental illness.

It is about a society that codifies hatred into its schools and laws. It is about an evil that is memorialized and lifted by the State in the form of a confederate flag flying at the state capital. It is about racism, the lives that racism takes, and the complete refusal of America to acknowledge that it exists.

But today, I needed to remind myself that hurt and pain and terror aren’t normal. Today, when I cried, I felt a little bit more human.

Please, please, please, take care of yourselves.