Ward: We must acknowledge our role in massacres

The words “I forgive you” or “take down the flag” must not relieve us of the task of self-examination as a state, a people and individuals following the Charleston massacre. Nor must we allow distracting other issues paraded before us — the flag, gun laws, drugs, hate groups, mental illness — to absorb the blame so we don’t have to. As Ed Madden’s poem says, Dylan Roof “is not alien … he is one of us.”

I myself didn’t pull the trigger, don’t hate blacks, am disgusted by white supremacist ideology, always wanted the flag down, don’t even own a gun.

But Madden (“When we’re told we’ll never understand,” June 25) and Claudia Smith Brinson (“South Carolinians and forgiveness,” June 25) remind me that I am part of a system and culture that produced Dylann Roof — and Adam Lanza, and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and on and on. A system that is producing more like them as I write. As Ms. Brinson said, it is not enough to attend a rally, take a selfie and go home. There is really only one effort worth the trouble, and President Obama named it in his eulogy for Clementa Pinckney: self-examination.

Search inside for the attitudes, anxieties and inadequacies that enable us to blame other people and factors, exempting ourselves, for the suffering of victims of prejudice. If we do that, then we will find that their pain is no different from ours. Those whose suffering we tolerate at a distance are stand-ins for us at the table of life’s inevitable ration of pain.

If instead we can step up for our share, we will find our common humanity. Our common grief will make us brothers and sisters and parents and children of one another.

We’ve had opportunities for this before. April 19, 1999: the Columbine Massacre. Sept. 11, 2001. July 20, 2012: Century Theater, Aurora, Colo. Dec. 14, 2012: Sandy Hook Elementary School. And many others. Each time, the nationwide shock and grief was enormous, and could have led us to the deeper self-examination necessary for real, lasting change. But we got over it.

If we just get over this, too, we’ll again return to our default position — on the production line for the next Dylann Roof.

Columbia

This story was originally published July 12, 2015 at 7:41 PM.