The events of the Columbine school shooting in April 1999 generated various responses from Americans: one of the first responses was the outpouring of support for stronger gun control legislation. Another response was the "law-and-order" reaction to students suspected of planning or contemplating similar kinds of attacks on their own schools. In a case on October 25, 1999, students who were suspected of contemplating a similar attack were arrested and charged with criminal activity, even though no attack took place. The motivation for these responses seems to be the need to exert control over a kind of violence which attacks us where we are most vulnerable:

Control the guns
Control the students
Control the violence

But I remember my thoughts on the day after the shooting when the newscasts were full of images of death. I walked away from my office towards the bus stop, talking to a friend. And what I wanted to express to her was my idea that somehow this incident was connected to Patricia Williams' text, The Alchemy of Race and Rights, and the scenes and images that Williams presented there. Even though the shootings at Columbine were not (primarily at least) racially motivated, I felt that somehow the issue at stake for me had to do with the anger and distance which allows us to actively harm others or to ignore their pain. I was wondering if the process of distancing oneself from others is the same in the case of the gunmen at Columbine and in the various accounts of racism which Williams presents.

In her text, Williams relates the story of ringing the buzzer of a Benneton's clothing store in Soho and being denied entry by the salesperson inside. Her prose affected me strongly -- her anger, frustration, and sense of hopelessness. My reaction to her story was the desire to put myself in place of the salesperson and open the door. Some parts of this essay are focused on such desires -- the need to somehow shift position and affect not only the situations of others, but one's own perspective.

I am uncomfortable about the naiveté of this effort, but I continue because I believe that there may be no way for me to talk about these issues in a personal way without being, to a certain extent, naive. If my claim is that I want to explore how a non-conventional text can help me to speak about certain issues in a way that combines personal reflections and the conscious theories with which I build my world-view, then I am necessarily forced to reveal my lack of understanding: the ill-informed, disorganized, or naive ways that I see (and have seen) the world. In fact, I offer this text with the idea that it is through such revelations of imperfection and error that deeper understanding might be built.

My need to respond to the Columbine shooting (and other events of violence) and to the experiences Williams relates in Alchemy has resulted in this text, which explores my participation, attempts to reveal and critique my own lack of understanding, and admits and fosters my sense of connectedness to other people's experiences. I am hoping that this text might enable other responses of this kind. Perhaps it could be even be a tool for the building of other spaces where individuals share their sense of vulnerability, guilt, anger, etc., with the goal of learning, understanding, and connecting our experiences in productive ways.

I offer this text as a trail of bread crumbs
although I don't know where the trail leads.