“Whose blood will spill, whose heart will break? Who’ll be the last to die for a mistake?
— Bruce Springsteen, “Last To Die”
And once again: Why?
It’s the question we always find ourselves asking in moments like this, the understanding we always seek as bodies lay strewn and the air is rent by shrieks of mourning.
But for all that, the answer is no mystery.
As is so often the case with America’s miseries, if you seek the origin story, if you follow the twisted roots back to the beginning, you will find people who were desperate to guard the ramparts of white supremacy.
For instance, as historian Kevin M. Kruse points out in “The 1619 Project,” we sit in traffic gridlock because suburban voters routinely reject mass transit measures for fear their distant enclaves might become more accessible to people of color from the city centers.