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I am a journalist and author. I& #39;ve covered ugliness & injustice & hatred & death for more than 20 years. I find myself empty and speechless today. A writer with no words, I& #39;ve been hollowed out by the racism that defiantly refuses to be shamed, the violence that knows no mercy.
If I had wise words or hope or context to offer, I& #39;ve already expressed them dozens of times in the past, every time that the nation I loved broke my heart and the people I think of as countrymen showed no compassion for their American family writ large.
I simply have nothing more to say. If you tell me that our country that I love is the greatest in the world, all I can do is gesture mutely, draw your attention to what is happening on our streets. Nothing I say can have more impact than the truth of our current situation.
In my younger days, I might have written a passionate think piece about how the underlying hatred stems back to a Civil War that was ostensibly won by the North but in which the South was the real victor. I don& #39;t have the energy any more.
Mute and speechless, I hear Toni Morrison& #39;s voice echo in my head, that this is not something any person of color can solve. "White people have a very, very serious problem," she said, "And they should start thinking about what they can do about it. Take me out of it.”
I wish you guys could solve this problem and leave us out of it. I wish the rotten core of America could be cleaned without involving those who didn& #39;t contribute to its putrefaction. But whatever has gone wrong in White America is focused on black faces. We can& #39;t step away.
"Physician, heal thyself." The meaning of that ancient phrase is that you shouldn& #39;t tell others to address an ill that you are suffering from. In other words, don& #39;t tell black Americans about what& #39;s wrong with their communities when there is so much wrong with yours.
I have been returning to poetry today because I have no words left to express the devastation in my soul today. Because I need the genius of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks to articulate my anguish.
Even someone as light-skinned as I has been thinking about race and writing about race and talking about race for nearly all of my 50 years. I need my white friends to take this burden from me. I need you to take over, because my steps are faltering.
