Charleston

"I have no words."

That's the refrain. Where my mind dead ends when confronted with what to say on Facebook, on Twitter. But it isn't true. It is never true. There are no words to describe the pain, the horror, or the grief, certainly. Emotions so strong render words limp and infantile by their enormity. But there are words for outrage. And there are words for the frustrations of impotence that compound the outrage. There are words to describe the systems that not only allow for, but nurture the kind of violence that occurred Wednesday night in Charleston. And it is important we use them, because our systems of representation in this country are broken, iterating toward a consolidation of power so severe that almost all we can do is rage with our words.

But where and how? I know I am not alone in feeling the impotence of a Facebook post meant to convey solidarity or outrage devolving into congratulatory "likes" or comments (or in rare cases, "shares"), or a tweet that disappears into the ether. In large part, that is why I started this page, to have an outlet for things too large for them to simply reflect back on me, as though my thoughts and feelings on the matter are only voiced for the purposes of self-promotion. 

So let me be clear: I am not writing this because I want you to like me, or think I'm a good person; I am writing it because I want this violence to stop. 

I want white police officers to stop taking black lives, to stop traumatizing black communities, to stop beating black bodies with impunity. I want white media to stop defending violence against black lives in the guise of "fair reporting," and with coded language that further dehumanizes the dead, the beaten, and the traumatized. I want the white media to stop isolating the racial component of these crimes in order to minimize their discomfort. I want the community I belong to by virtue of the color of my skin to be able to look at ourselves, our past and our present, and have the strength of character not to be frightened. Not to be frightened of seeing our complicity in a system built on violence laid bare. Not to be frightened of what that means about us, of how that makes us feel about ourselves, of how it makes us question our accomplishments, our virtues, our pain. To see through these abstract fears of the self to the very real fears of bodily harm, incarceration, and death unmourned faced by those not fortunate enough to be afraid of self-reflection. Not fortunate by virtue of their skin color, the texture of their hair, the shape of their nose, the fullness of their lips, or whatever other arbitrary definitions of race we have adopted as true in our attempts to separate ourselves from their humanity. I want us to know and understand that to change our culture in the direction of compassion and justice is the only way to alleviate the pain of our complicity. 

And I want us to act on that knowledge. 

And it is here that I come up short. Because I, like many in my generation, have become separated and isolated from the means to enact change. Because the protests of the 60s and 70s didn't just teach citizens how to demonstrate, they taught those in power how to quell a demonstration with platitudes and empty gestures. Because our voices in this system we call a democracy no longer matter if they are not backed by money. Because our votes in local politics have been corralled into districts that insure against change. And in the face of this hopelessness, we must vent our spleen on the internet. 

But let us not take solace in our words. Let us find bravery, not comfort in our community. Let us demand of each other, in all of the conversations that inevitably follow these tragedies, that we search for a means to act.

If that act is symbolic, so be it. Demand that Nikki Haley take down the confederate flag. And by god, I will play my Southern card here. I have never denied my Southern heritage. I never will. To deny it is to separate myself from it, and while that may be intended to mean, "I want no part of it," it's effect is to say that I am no part of it, and to surrender Southern culture to the sole responsibility of those who still defend that damn flag, who still believe that the Civil War was not about slavery. I am rooted in Southern culture, I am part of the South, however far I may roam, and my pride stems not from those who enforced and defended slavery and Jim Crow, but from those who opposed it at great peril. To fly that flag as a symbol of "Southern pride" is to deny the Southernness of those who died opposing what it truly stands for. Of those who were tortured and died under the manacles it defended. Take it down.

If that act is uncomfortable, tough. White parents need to talk to their children about race in this country. Black families have been shouldering that burden alone for far too long. Just as boys must be taught not to rape as a means of inoculation against a culture that encourages it, so too do white children need to learn not to hate, not to fear, not to see as less-than-human those with darker skin. 

These are things we can do immediately, with petitions, and within our own families. But in order to move forward politically, we must first address our means of representation, and how "one person, one vote" is not the same as "one dollar, one vote." Campaign finance reform is not as impassioned a demand as a call for justice. It feels tangential to the immediacy of our needs as citizens. But it is essential. Because the strength of our voice is in numbers, and if the number of people demanding change can be brushed aside by the number of dollars spent to elect a politician, we have nothing. The question then becomes, "if the system is already closed, how do we interrupt it?" By directly engaging as one-term candidates, en masse, somehow magically getting elected, and even more magically pushing the legislation through? Call me a defeatist, but I highly doubt it. We can, however, petition on a state-by-state basis to hold a second Constitutional Congress. I'm not kidding. It is a provision in the Constitution. It is legal and non-violent. And it has the best (albeit still unbelievably small) chance of working compared to any other suggestions people have put forth. 

If you have a better idea, shout it from the rooftops. Let us take this moment of horrible truth and demand that we have the means to better ourselves. This is me at my most optimistic. I refuse to be cowed by the inevitability of failure into being ashamed of my most naïve hope: that we can fix our broken systems. I refuse to be soothed by the knowledge that I am not alone in my frustrations and anger and grief, into thinking that finding communion in suffering is enough. It is not enough. 

The truth is not that "I have no words," but rather that I despise them even as I write them, speak them, for their insufficiency.