The shooting this week of nine innocent people at the historic black church in South Carolina says more about our country than most people want to admit. And our response to it will say the rest. Despite the endless squawking on cable news, this despicable shooting in Charleston is not confusing. There’s no mystery to why this horrible act of violence occurred. Racism and guns. That’s why. The only mystery is why we don’t do more to fix it.
This idea that your race/gender/faith/class/sexuality/etc. is better than any other and entitles you to anything is taught is must be untaught. The mindset that you are superior to others and should have power to control their bodies and lives is one that comes from an ingrained sense of privilege. It comes from living in a system that has this principle in the foundations of its most revered institutions.
To pretend that this mass murder by yet another angry white man is just an example of one troubled, lone wolf is to be willfully ignorant. To pretend that our country’s open and easy access to guns has nothing to do with the epidemic of mass shootings is to be willfully ignorant.
Racism (as with every other –ism and –phobia that plagues our culture) is not a mental illness, it’s a learned behavior. We can unlearn it, we just need to will.
The world can be so complicated. We can get caught up on our dramas and our grievances and our jealousies and our hatreds. But it should be so simple. Live and let live. Work hard and be nice to people. Just do right. As the late, great Dr. Maya Angelou would say, it is up to us. Happy and peaceful weekend, all.
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My Weekend Contemplation
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