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Oy vey! Where was the editor on this one?

Midway, Midwest 4 hours ago
psst. Charles?

The deadly Paris attacks reinforce: all lives matter. We all bleed red. In a free society, there can never be any guaranteed safe spaces, not in classrooms, concert halls, stadiums, or sadly, even churches. We must all "swing together' in the choir of a shared humanity...

As we see more and more social integration, bi-racial children, and world re-settling, it is time for all good men and women to step up and reaffirm what has not changed by the events of last Friday: Life is Precious. Life Matters. Hatred/Division is Easy and Cheap.

I invite you to join us, Charles. Don't write generically, telling us what "one" has seen and what "one" must do. You and me make us. Together, we shall overcome the slavery issue of the 19th century, the segregation of the 20th, and the demanding issues of citizenship, identity and race in the 21st.

It's not just words, Charles. That's not the "work" needed. It's the daily actions of workers, of every color and creed, who get up and accomplish something daily. Forget the labels, prizes and awards. What did you do to respect the lives of others today? How did you help? The more you think like that, the less you will self-isolate and swing alone.

In response to:

Before there were the Paris terror attacks that changed everything and the second Democratic presidential debate that changed nothing, much of America had been transfixed by the scene playing out on college campuses across the country: black students and their allies demanding an insulation from racial hostility, full inclusion and administrative responsiveness.

There was a part of the debate around those protests that I have not been able to release other than by writing here, one step off the news, but hopefully in step with the history of this moment.
...
You can’t condemn the unseemly howl and not the lash.

Furthermore, I fully understand the desire for safe spaces, for racial sanctuary, particularly in times of racial trauma. I have always had these safe spaces, not by black design, but as a byproduct of white racism.

I grew up in the rural South when racial segregation was no longer the law, but remained the norm. I have gone to predominately black schools most of my life, schools that began so or became so because of white people’s deep desire to resist racial commingling. But what was born of hate, black folks infused with pride and anointed with value.

There existed for me a virtual archipelago of racial sanctuaries, places — communities, churches, schools — where I could be insulated from the racial scarring that intimate proximity to racial hostility can produce.

That is, I assume, what these students want as well.

In Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s foreword to Harvard professor emeritus Martin Kilson’s American Book Award-winning 2014 book, Transformation of the African American Intelligentsia, 1880-2012, Gates quotes an interview that Kilson gave The Crimson in 1964. Kilson said: “I suppose we’re looking for a new Negro identity, a psychological process, which has its roots in a broader Negro community.” Kilson continued, “It’s true that Negroes, like anyone else, prize individuality. But the thing the compulsive liberal can’t understand is that we also like to swing together. You know, like we did in my good father’s church back home.”

At no time is swinging together more important than when the death threats start to come and media vultures start to circle.