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The recent juxtaposition of a white police officer holding a twelve year old girl in her bathing suit at gun point and the other instances of police over reach which only appear like a flood because of the advent of cell phone videos of other absurd racial based policing make me think of my daughter.  Ten and a leg up half privileged as all hell trying to explain to her what racial and first world economic privilege are.  I showed her an internet video of a Syrian child who had not eaten for days except for grass.  Later that day I dropped her off at her friend’s house who was throwing a party because her family were extras in the new Jurassic Park movie and they were going to the see it as a fun outing.  James Holmes is in jail. 

I didn’t know the family because I live in a different city than my daughter.  The dinosaur girl’s stepdad is from Iran.  I talked to him for a while about his place of birth.  He’s an airline pilot.  I told him, “I don’t know much about Iran, but I have heard Iranian people love to have people over, feed them, enjoy company.  I didn’t know you or your family, but when you invited me in here today to step inside, I decided to stay have some food.  I am introvert and I tend not to impose.”  He smiled, he had made a rice dish with saffron in a way my American tongue had never had the privilege to taste.  I told him a Palestinian poet friend of mine said, “You judge a people by their food and their music.  No matter the language we communicate, we share.”

I heard the news last night of the shootings in a place of faith.  The typical tongue marketing of mental illness, shooter, gunmen, not thug, gangster, or terrorist.  I thought fuck that dude, where is the water boarding, send that mother fucker to Guantanamo.  Oh wait, different rules, lines on a map.  I remember taking my daughter to see Selma and her visceral reaction to the beginning of the film.  The girls, the girls in the stairwell and the boom.  I remember crying, glancing over at my daughter’s face. 

We all know right and wrong.  In our hearts we know.  There are lines and lies we tell ourselves, “Oh this is important, this is political, this is life or this is money or this war needs to be fought so they don’t do this to us.”  I wonder if my daughter is going to be somebody who says us and them.  I don’t know. 

She has a mom in one world maybe some people would call country red.  She has dad in one world maybe some people would call city blue.  Her skin is white, her privilege like a footstool she doesn’t even know she has.  I am glad she is alive tonight.  I don’t get to see her as much as I would like, even for father’s day her mom wouldn’t give me the whole weekend, but that is more than some father’s will get to see their daughters this Sunday. 

This Sunday Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Sharonda Singleton, Myra Thompson, six of the nine were somebody’s daughter.  Most probably went to a church in fear like Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair when they were kids, what about in 2015?  Susie Jackson was 87 years old.  Ethel Lance was 70.  The terrorist fucker murdered them.  Why lines on a map, lines in his head, that he convinced himself were meaningful?  He chose evil.  We chose what lines we see.

 Cynthia Hurd, 54, branch manager for the Charleston County Library System

Susie Jackson, 87, longtime church member

Ethel Lance, 70, employee of Emanuel AME Church for 30 years

Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49, admissions counselor of Southern Wesleyan University

The Honorable Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41, state senator, Reverend of Emanuel AME Church

Tywanza Sanders, 26, earned business administration degree from Allen University

Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74, retired pastor (died at MUSC)

Rev. Sharonda Singleton, 45, track coach at Goose Creek High School

Myra Thompson, 59, church member