(CHICAGO) — It’s a week after the Columbine tragedy and my wife and I are at the site where it all took place. I had come to Denver because I was offered a position to work with youth on military bases. At the kitchen table, early in the morning, I am face-to-face with the daughter (a high school senior) of our hosts. She expresses fear and apprehension about going back to school — after all, her high school wasn’t that far from Columbine. In that moment, this black kid from the projects of Chicago’s Southside and that white teenage girl were connected by senseless violence. A childhood and life of loss had, regretfully and beautifully, prepared me for this moment.
I was able to impart to her the hard lessons I had learned, and it seemed to help. Ultimately, I didn’t accept the job offer, but I took a great deal away from that visit and that early morning conversation at a kitchen table in a Denver suburb.
That young lady’s pain, I imagine, was not only understood by me, but by others as well, because, it seems, that when tragedy strikes a predominantly white area, there is no shortage of sympathizers — I say this with no bitterness or animus; it is merely an observation.
The same cannot be said of those who live in, let’s say, the inner-cities of Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles or Pittsburgh.
Nor does it seem that empathy is expended, to any great extent, on the maimed, mangled and dead in Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia or Sudan.
Aurora brings us face-to-face, once again, with the history, sociology and politics of senseless violence and the cultural dynamics of sympathy. I know that it is difficult to frame a tragedy as being the result of specific circumstances, especially while it is still fresh in our minds or it still being investigated. Nevertheless, because of what is known, it is possible to glean certain realities and make some compelling connections.
This recent, unfortunate occurrence provides for us an opportunity to understand through the lenses of history, sociology and politics, how certain violence is deemed senseless; how the victims of it are counted worthy of provoking sympathetic impulses. Yet, on the other hand, how other instances of aggression are applauded; how the targets of bloodshed located in certain areas around the nation, and indeed, the globe, are not beneficiaries of great compassion and understanding.
Historically, the hostility toward and deaths of indigenous peoples were framed in Manifest Destiny terminology or Promised Land theological language. The natives were the savage Canaanites that had to be driven out at all costs if God’s people were to obtain the prize. Such language and perceptions made the violence of the occupying power “sensible,” while, simultaneously, making any retaliation (to their quite reasonable brutality) barbarous or senseless.
In order for colonization to be successful, dehumanization has to be at the forefront. Nations had to be convinced that those they were brutalizing, those they were displacing, were actually un-human or sub-human — or at least not as human as they were.
Similarly, sociologically and politically, we see this in our current examination of violence and the cultural responses to it. People of color as well as the indigenous peoples in other countries, have been cast as savages indifferent to human life, as asking for it and deserving what they get. When CIA agents provide foreign governments with the tools and techniques for torture, it is not considered senseless violence. When governments compose false or erroneous premises for war and the result is hundreds of thousands killed and wounded, it is rarely called, by the politicians who voted for it and those who execute it, senseless violence.
We are, as we speak, training those, though not nearly enough, who specialize in PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). And we are doing so because we are beginning to recognize that a constant exposure to violence and a steady diet of war makes an impact on the soldier.
Soldiers often speak of sleeplessness or restlessness; feeling more irritable or having outbursts of anger; having difficulty concentrating; feeling constantly “on guard” or like danger is lurking around every corner. Yet, this is not only true of soldier in Afghanistan or Iraq, but also of the citizen of Afghanistan and Iraq. These symptoms are not only manifested in the resident of Darfur, Colombia or Palestine, but also in the habitants of some of our large (and sometimes, not-as-large) urban areas.
In our distant and more recent American history, there have been two constant and recurring themes in how we view and respond to senseless violence:
1. An emphatic emphasizing of race, a de-centralizing of sympathy and a racialized connection to political and social policy when it happens in communities inhabited by, predominantly, people of color;
2. A centralizing of sympathy, de-emphasizing of race and a de-racialized connection to political or social policy when it takes place in predominantly-white areas.
When the Columbine tragedy struck (and in other mass shootings as well), the question was asked, why are our children becoming so violent; when the characters in the reality show of violence are people of color, the response is what’s happening with those people or them and they.
When the targets and victims of violence happen to be white, what the victim did or didn’t do isn’t readily discussed. On the other hand, it seems that people of color have to pass some sort of litmus test to illicit a certain level of sympathy, that somehow the grief of a Black, Hispanic, Asian or Muslim mother isn’t as palpable as that of a White one.
Not once was it suggested that what took place only had to do with those people in Aurora. We were told by our president and presidential candidate to view this calamity through the eyes of a parent, an American citizen, a human being.
The refrains of “failed social policy” can be heard over and over again when violence happens in, let’s say the Black community. Who they voted for; who they trust politically; family and community dynamics all come into play in an emphatic emphasizing of race and ethnicity. Nevertheless, policy and law that are passed by white majorities that make it easy to obtain the weapons that are used in these mass shootings, is de-racialized. Predominantly-white legislators, overwhelmingly white-operated gun manufacturers and a mostly-white NRA are not cast in ethnicity or race, but rather, in a nebulous and protected (unnamed and untouched) whiteness — even when the perpetrator of the violence, many times, happens to be white.
By these declarations I am not suggesting that we should approach such matters with racialized logic, nothing could be further from the truth. But what I am saying, is that such racialized logic does exists and it hinders and hampers addressing senseless violence that takes place on a mass scale, against people of every hue.
It is September 13, 2011, the time is about 5 p.m. EST and I receive a phone call from Chicago, Ill. It is my mother. She is calling to tell me that my younger brother, all of 32 years of age, has been shot 21 times and is dead. The person responsible didn’t even have to reload.
Let’s close this sympathy gap; let us do away with this empathy deficit.