In Iowa column: Heartbroken in Iowa

When I first started to formulate ideas for this month's column, I thought I would write something about Andrea Farrington, the 20-year-old woman fatally shot in the back June 12. Coral Ridge Mall security guard Alexander Kozak has been charged with her murder.

Less than a week later, 21-year-old Kahdyesha Lemon of Dubuque died of stab wounds allegedly inflicted by Eddie Hicks, with whom police said she was in a relationship.

Farrington's murder came less than six weeks after Nicholas Leurkens allegedly stabbed Lynnsey Donald, described as his former girlfriend, to death in the Marion Hy-Vee parking lot. It was the fourth domestic homicide in Linn County within a year.

Looking at this series of murders, I thought, I have to write something about the sickness in our society that leads to such violence against women. As author Margaret Atwood said, 'Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

No, I'm not saying that all men are violent toward women. Of course not. I'm just saying women's fears are far from unfounded.

Then the Charleston church massacre happened, and my heart broke even more.

Please don't think I am equating these situations. They can't be equated beyond both being labeled as horrific.

As a friend pointed out, there's no shooting Olympics. The terror of violent racism does not cancel the terror of violent misogyny, and vice versa. They are both beyond despicable. They should both be unthinkable.

As they keep happening again and again, however, they're clearly not unthinkable at all.

Maybe the fact we tell ourselves these are unthinkable acts is part of the problem. Maybe we need to start by acknowledging how the millions of small things we allow to persist add up, creating a climate where such hatred seems very thinkable indeed.

When we don't call out our family members or friends for making racist jokes, we build that climate. When we don't protest discriminatory policing and housing and voting policies, we build that climate.

When we whitewash history to downplay the impact of slavery and centuries of oppression, we build that climate.

It goes beyond those overtly racist things. The climate is built in the microagressions and implicit biases, the ones we don't always even realize we're exhibiting. The biases that lead well-meaning managers to overlook black job candidates, without even realizing they're doing it, to give one of countless examples.

I used to think this kind of racism wasn't as dangerous as overt racism, but now I do. Because this kind of bias is so much harder to talk about and to address. And because it, too, contributes to the climate in which someone like Dylan Roof feels justified in his actions.

Some things are structural, built right into the building blocks of our society. Racism is one of them. When the ground we stand on is laced with hate, how can we be shocked when such poisonous plants grow from it?

I wish I hadn't felt compelled to address both Andrea Farrington's murder and the shooting in Charleston in the same column. They are both topics that deserve their own space and attention. But I only have one column a month, and here I am. Heartbroken.

If women are afraid men will kill them, I can't even fathom the fears my black friends and neighbors must feel.