After Buffalo

A few days ago, on a Saturday afternoon, in the community of Buffalo, NY — ten people died.

An 18-year-old man began livestreaming his mass destruction as he gunned down multiple innocents inside a neighborly supermarket. And a part of me falls back to that feeling. That feeling of feeling everything. The heavy anger, depression, numbness... Scenarios bubble from the ashes of another crime. A familiar one. All of it intertwines and shadows in the same face until much of the chaos turns your eyes to patterns, to examine the culprit and his howling vengeance. He tells you through a thick screen that his problem is our problem — his reasons are justified because you learn how to exist in the mirrored serenity. Because his existence is our existence. And that’s where much of the problem lies, I suppose. I am no scholar among racial injustice, but I am a human who sees that my mirror is broken to many. To tell me why these things happen is awfully mysterious and cold. To tell an ant why fire is casted onto his hill — I’m terribly clueless. But I can try to answer.

Most campaigns against hatred slogan the red-lit word “STOP.” But, as many as you know, you can’t simply “STOP” or “END” hatred towards another. In frankness (and if we’re being honest with each other), this violence will never end. As long as we continue to live on, breed and learn, people will find keyholes to make the “right” call and become something bigger than themselves, even if the act is contiguously personal.

I often think about wonderous alternatives. Of what could’ve or still could be. One of these thoughts is home to the vanishment of hatred. I think about it a lot, actually. It’s a blurry image with warm colors; conversation that lasts, smiles heavier than laughter. It’s a product of something you can almost touch. However, I can hear others mocking my ideas of this thinking… And they may be right. I don’t live in the gray, dream-like wonders of where I’m completely ruled as someone equal. I live in a world where an 18-year-old can kill and remain known. Where news covers one side and blames the other. Where acts like these are celebrated by humans who run towards burning indifference instead of looking through.

After the shooting, the community of Buffalo gathered in grief and anger. Weeping blending far behind the pleading questions of shouting — of why dangers like these happen, and how casual bloodshed enters our mind. A moment when things stay still for a second and not a minute. Colored citizens simply asking, “why?” And even a few days out, not enough to hold two hands, society has found something new to gleam on.

I have no clue what these words will do, nor do I understand where these words will go. Just know, what I wrote came from passion, sadness, and hate. A universal state in focusing on a single incident that will certainly happen again in a form of bullets. And to tell you why these things happen may not be fulfilling or hopeful. Reasons like Buffalo happen because we lack attention, and we lack compassion... And nothing more.

And how to deal with this, personally, I stay outside and stare at the morning rain, and I lie to myself for a minute that I’m living in a gray, dream-like world that loves me.

Aaron Salter, 55

Ruth Whitfield, 86

Pearly Young, 77

Katherine “Kat” Massey, 72

Deacon Heyward “Tenny” Patterson, 67

Celestine Chaney, 65

Roberta A. Drury, 32

Margus D. Morrison, 52

Andre Mackneil, 53

Geraldine “Gerri” Talley, 62