Exhausted Hope

Exhausted Hope

The current condition of our nation has caused us all so much sorrow and pain. It’s heavy, exhausting, because we have always known how cruel America the Beautiful has been — and can still be — to people of color. The shocking brutality and grief surrounding the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renée Nicole Good, both killed by federal agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota — the hometown of Prince — are deeply disturbing. But let’s not get it twisted: this is not America reaching out for something new. There is something else, though, especially jarring about this violence unfolding in a place that once gave the world music about freedom, love, and unity. Yet the contrast feels like an old, familiar song.

I can only hope the times are changing for the 80% of my evangelical neighbors. It is better late than never to be about what is fair, just, and right. However, we got what you voted for — and “you say you want a leader, but you can’t seem to make up your mind.” This table tennis of morals volleys our civilization's core. It’s the weariness of watching a nation shocked by what has long been normalized when it happens to those our society has chosen to “other.”

James Baldwin once warned that violence perpetrated against Black people — and, by extension, against any marginalized community — is often dismissed, treated as though it “doesn’t count.” But he cautioned that any society that permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced will soon find that no one in that society is safe. We are living inside the truth of that warning now.

Still — the optimist in me refuses to let despair have the final word. I hold onto hope because when we name our pain and share it honestly, we create space for collective healing. Bearing witness together matters. It reminds us that silence is what sustains cruelty, and connection is what challenges it. Even in exhaustion, I believe there is power in our willingness to speak up for humanity, to feel each “other’s” pain, and to dream of singing and laughing in the Purple Rain.

By: Barnard The Barber

Barnard Sims1/28/26