Coffee with Chuck

I think it is easy to ask how the heck did we get here? Or another easy question one might ask why does this keep happening? I say these questions are easy to ask not to devalue them but to say they are easy to ask because they are almost rhetorical, but they are questions that do not have one singular answer. That is why they are easy to ask but that is the same reason why they are hard to answer. Over, the couple past days I have even asked myself these questions and I have not been able to come up with a concrete answer. The ambiguity and the uncertainties that these questions present truly frightens me, but they also have crafted me into a nihilist. I am truly at a loss of words, I am tired, I am frustrated, I am angry, I am mortified, and to be honest I am hopeless. With all this being said, I am like many people still trying to process the moment we are in. Which is why I am streaming my thoughts.

The binary oppositional world we live in loves affirmation and people love to believe their view is 100% correct. This seeking for accuracy supports the idea that there is one truth, but this gets blurred by people saying there is two sides to the story. However, they only believe in their side. And, this belief prevents them to see the other side of the story. This belief in one side of the story reveals biases, prejudices, and tunnel vision induced thoughts. These biases, prejudices, and thoughts allow for people to justify hate. This justification of hate is what we have seen this past week and countless other times in ignoring the experiences and stories of Black Americans. This is where I am so lost because I do not see the disconnect in the justification of violence committed against anyone but more specifically Black individuals. There is no justification for the violence we have seen this summer produced by police officers against Black bodies. You cannot begin to justify the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and the attempted murder of Jacob Blake. However, there are folks who will and have tried to justify these heinous acts by law enforcement officials.

And these efforts of justification are the efforts that have me at a standstill in fear. I am scared and frighten because they show there is a lack of humanity in the world. Nothing about these violent acts have been humane, therefore, the attempted justification provides evidence that there is no humanity. I am also scared because these horrific events show there is no empathy for Black Americans. How can you shoot a woman in her sleep? How can you shoot a man 7 times in the back in front of his children as they sit in the back of the car he was driving? And, how can you kneel on a man’s neck suffocating him as he calls for his mother? Come on! The lack of humanity and the absence of empathy makes me question if human nature is flawed? And if the answer is a yes, then currently I am doubtful of change. I say I am doubtful because I do not know how we change human nature, people’s biases, or minds. And, I don’t even know where to begin with on how to help people gain humanity. Or make a person more empathetic. But, I don’t know. I think I am back where I started more questions than answers. I guess that is part of the process.