It’s been a rough month for America.
The past few weeks have seen bloodshed that has shone a light on deep-seated divisions in our society, chasms that are seeming to grow by the day.
In June, 49 LGBT Latinx people and their allies were murdered in Orlando, Fla. Earlier this month, two black men were shot and killed by police in separate incidents. Days later, five police officers were gunned down in Dallas.
The tenor of the country is frighteningly getting to the point that when news breaks of a mass shooting, the shock doesn’t go very deep. CNN starts its round-the-clock coverage, Facebook tributes abound and there are calls for peace from thought leaders.
But the past few weeks have seemed a bit different. The violence we’ve seen means something: It is not the result of a singular person’s mental-health struggles or personal disagreements. It points to systemic ills plaguing our society. Homophobia is ingrained across large swaths of American culture, fueled in some parts by religious circles. Racism too is a quietly accepted norm in our society. And violence is an all-too-frequent response to conflict.
While the social-media debates we’ve all doubtlessly been exposed to have at times been tiring, especially when they involve ignorance, that they’re happening says something. That protests are happening each day says something. That Congress members spent a day sitting on the House floor says something.
Our country is at an important tipping point. The divisions that have oppressed many in our country for years have long been kept under wraps, pushed to the side, and the past few weeks are bringing those injustices to the surface.
Putting a public face to the LGBT community in the past few years seemed to have helped the pendulum swing closer to equality for our community. Perhaps some people need to keep hearing these conversations — about the tangible effects of antigay bias, police brutality, race relations — to begin to internalize the highly charged external tensions going on nationally.
Discourse and debate — without the violence that can veer it off-course — are needed to expose the biases that have taken root in far too many Americans for far too long.