“As a parent,” countless people can
sympathize with the grief-stricken community of Newtown, Connecticut.
Therefore, while mass shootings are nothing new, many feel certain that the
outcry this time will be
intense and sustained enough to propel the nation toward gun control because
most victims were small children. The prediction is likely correct, but what
does that tell us about empathy and being a parent in the United States?
For most Americans, being a good parent means protecting
your child. It means
offering your child the best you can provide, without regard for whether other
parents have the same opportunities. In this context, it makes sense for
a homeless mother, who sent her child to school in a neighborhood where they
did not live, to be “charged with first-degree larceny for stealing $15,686 in
education funds from the Norwalk, Connecticut school district” (April2011).
It is a very American mentality: “I got mine. I don’t have time to care about
whether you got yours.” This attitude permeates parenting as much as anything
else. This is how we end up with cities across the nation in which some schools
do not have enough books while others have an abundance of everything.
So, when we hear our leaders insist that they are
responding “as a parent,” we should consider what that has ALWAYS meant. One of
the unspoken prerequisites for our leaders is that they be heterosexual and
married with children. Candidates with these characteristics are viewed as
stable and responsible, and their morals are not automatically
questioned. Thus, it has mostly been heterosexual married parents who
have made the decisions that created our current policies.
Also, many of those now shedding tears for the
Sandy Hook victims quickly grew tired when Trayvon Martin’s parents had to beg
for a simple arrest…for 46 days after George Zimmerman killed their son.
Likewise, many of those who are heartbroken “as parents” about the Newtown
shooting rolled their eyes just a few weeks ago when Jordan Davis was killed in
a parking lot for the volume of his music, drawing comparisons to Martin’s
murder. Most readers will object to my even mentioning these dead
teenagers, insisting that Friday’s violence was different because small
children were targeted. A parent’s pain is a parent’s pain, though, right? No
parent should have to bury their child. We all understand that, right?
As the heartrending funerals begin in Connecticut,
many note that counseling services should be a matter of course for the
community, that the surviving children and their families are traumatized and
in need of coordinated support. However, as a nation, we do not think in those
terms when we hear about the gun violence plaguing inner cities. We do
not work to ensure that youngsters exposed to that trauma will receive help.
Instead, our policies dictate that impoverished communities can count on less investment in education and healthcare, but they
will receive more than their share of surveillance, juvenile detention, and
incarceration.
In short, gun violence in Newtown inspires an
outpouring of support and empathy for victims and understanding for the
perpetrator, who has inspired a national conversation on mental illness.
Meanwhile, for those who are black and brown and/or poor, gun violence helps
justify the school-to-prison
pipeline. And when the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil
rights organizations try to call attention to the injustice, they get nothing
like the media coverage and overall emotional investment that we see when
victims are white and middle class.
And let’s not lie to ourselves and suggest that
our empathy has nothing to do with the fact that the victimized neighborhood is
predominantly white and middle class.
The reason so many Americans identify with Newtown residents is that, “as
parents,” they are doing exactly what Sandy Hook parents did. They are
moving to suburban areas with “the best schools” in order to shield their
children from interaction with “others.”
Our neighborhoods and schools are not segregated by
accident. Let’s not pretend that the best schools “just happen” to be
mostly white, and low-performing schools “just happen” to be mostly black and
brown. Parents’ decisions about where to live—when they possess the means to
make that decision—have everything to do with avoiding schools with too many
“undesirables”…and even the poorest among us have received an impeccable
education regarding who that is.
Americans are good at playing innocent,
though. We just can’t understand how tragedies like this happen. “Who
would visit this kind of violence on children?,” we ask desperately.
Meanwhile, our society does violence to children
everyday, and all of us are complicit. Not only do we allow corporations to
make untold profits by bombarding youngsters with violence via toys and video
games, but we also turn our backs on countless children. Because we have
allowed food deserts to form all over the nation, malnutrition is not just a
problem in so-called “Third World” countries. In fact, as Chris Williams reports,
“The number of federally licensed firearm dealers (129,817)” in the United
States far exceeds “the amount of grocery chain stores (36,569).”
Likewise, we sentence innocent black and brown
children to live (and die) in toxic environments. A 1992 study of 1, 177
cases handled by the Environmental Protection Agency revealed that “polluters
of sites near the greatest white populations received penalties 500 percent
higher than penalties imposed on polluters in minority areas—an average of
$335, 566 for white areas contrasted with $55, 318 for minority areas” (Lipsitz
9). Indeed, “nationwide, 60 percent of African Americans and Latinos live
in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites” (Lipsitz 9).
As long as white middle-class children are protected, there is apparently no
need for widespread action.
What is most disappointing about American responses
to the realities we have created
is that we pretend that our politics matter only some of the time. But, politics refers
to how societies make decisions about where to funnel resources, including
emotional resources. Everything social, everything about human
interaction, is political. This elementary school shooting does not become
politicized because people discuss the
social issues it lays bare. What the United States values is simply being
exposed, and make no mistake, values and politics always go together.
When we do violence to children everyday but are
willing to acknowledge the damage only when particular kinds of children are
hurt, that is a reflection of our politics—of where we think resources and
energy should go.
What would happen if being a parent motivated
people to want to change institutions and policies so that (for example) all
children receive a quality education, not just those whose guardians can afford
your zip code?
If parenting meant that you want to make life
better for every child, not just your own, different decisions would be
made. Then, it might really mean something when people say that they
empathize “as a parent.” Without that shift in values/politics, the Sandy Hook
tragedy will simply encourage parents with material means to seclude themselves
and their children even more, looking for a safety that they are not
invested in others having.
Since its inception, this country has operated on
the premise that we are not all brothers and sisters, that we can
disregard the welfare of others and it won’t negatively impact our own.
We still seem to believe that. However, as the incomparable James Baldwin
explained long ago, “you can’t deny your brothers without paying a terrible price
for it. And, even then, they are still your brothers.”
So, as a nation, we should ask ourselves: As long
as we refuse to make the United States safe for all the children here, why
would we think it would be safe for our own? Putting the question another way, because
I ask it as an American with not only tears in my eyes but also blood on my conscience: When the United States
sends drones
to deliver terror and death to families in other parts of the world, why would
we expect peace at home?
