The Words You Use About Ferguson Are Really Fucking Important
Ferguson. It is appalling. I have used that word a lot in the last forty-eight hours, appalling. I don’t know what else to use, and I’ll tell you why.
Words like ‘horrifying’ and 'terrifying’ are not mine to use, they are not mine to take, because I am white and it is not my fear. I am Caucasian and buxom and slender and I live in a world where the last two might cause me problems, but the first one protects me like a bulletproof vest. And if I am attacked in an alley because I am female and a triple-D cup, I can fight back and know that I will still be protected because when I break that man’s nose and snap his fingers I will be considered strong. When a cop is the aggressor and the victim is a black child or teenager, they don’t have that luxury.
Words like 'disgusting’ and 'sickening’ are good, but they do not capture the freezing shock and fear that trickles through my veins. They do not capture the way I want to grab my friends, my precious friends who I love for their beautiful souls and sparkling minds, and beg them to always be careful, because I do not know how to live in a world without them. They do not capture the way I shake because I know that these people are supposed to protect us, because we are told in schools to trust anyone in a uniform, and they betrayed that trust without a second thought. They do not capture my anger.
Words like 'infuriating’ and 'maddening’ are even better, because I am so angry. I am so filled with white-hot rage that I feel it burn my skin and crack my bones. I am wrathful, the sort of berserker fury that used to carry my ancestors into battle on a tide of blood. I am a protector, I am the one my friends can trust to rip into their enemies without fear and snarl in the face of danger because how dare you and use my bare hands against those who hurt them, I am the one of us who wants to make a career out of that, I am the one who was in seventh grade when I said 'I want to be a cop, I want to help people, I want to save people’ and they took that away from me, the idea of saving people as a cop, and I see red because of it. I am the one who is so blindingly furious that they would dare use their power in violence against citizens that I could joyously tear them to shreds and glory in every second because justice must be done, should have been done. But I am also sick and cold at the thought that it was not, that a verdict was passed down and now there is a family who must go to a gravestone and decide how to tell their dead child that his killer walks free.
I am appalled. I am cold with shock and hot with fury and sick with disgust and weak with fear and twisted with the knowledge that I am safe while people suffer. I am appalled and you should be too.
