I'm not changing my Facebook icon

This post is going to be triggery, I think. Some people also might not like what I have to say, but I'm going to say it anyway, because I think that it's important. 

We're weird about terrorism, here in the United States. Whenever something happens outside of the country, we jump up to "stop it." However, there are conditions on this. I'm fifteen, but from what I've seen, we're the quickest to jump when the people involved in the violence are brown.

What happened in France was horrible. I'm glad that people are grieving alongside the country, because they need the extra support during this time. However, I've noticed that there are many, many people blaming Islam, even though ISIS is not a Muslim group. In fact, they've killed many Muslims, which is why there are Syrian refugees. 

The refugees are being blamed, even though this is the type of experience they experienced daily in Syria. The type of violence that did not get a hashtag or an option to change your Facebook icon to the colors of the Syrian flag.

Even though France wasn't the only place to experience violence from ISIS (Baghdad and Beirut were also targeted within the same twenty four hours), I only see people talking about France. At the Democrat Debate, there was a moment of silence for France. On Facebook, there's an option to change your picture to the colors of the French flag. 

France. France. On Facebook, it's all people talk about. People Magazine and the Huffington Post have posted countless articles about it in the last day or so. 

It's not a problem that everyone is talking about France. The problem is that we're only talking about France.

Why isn't there an option to have the flags of Baghdad or Beirut as my Facebook icon? Why is it that there are only a select few number of articles written about these other countries? Why is it that hatred of refugees and Muslims is being condoned? The fact that we, as a society, are quick to grieve along with France but not Baghdad or Beirut says something about what we think.

We think that the lives in France are more important. Why? Because it is a Western, and some would say white country.

Although many people don't want to admit it, we don't seem to care about victims when they're brown. The people who suffer in the Middle East are a bunch of nameless, faceless people to us. Many of us don't know what's going on, besides the fact that we're in a state of constant war. 

It's easy to jump on the issue when the violent ones are brown. When they're the victims, suddenly, we are jumping away. Just recently, with the protests occurring at universities such as Yale and Mizzou, there was the threat of terrorism against black students.

The reaction? Scorn. Even after the tragedy in France occurred, there were people mocking the protesters at these schools. The protesters who feared that something similar could happen to them because of the color of their skin.

Why wasn't their fear valid?

While I was on Twitter today, I saw people linking to a tragedy where 147 students were killed in Kenya  and was quick to note how no one was talking about it. However, this tragedy occurred in April. The point that the posters were making was that there hadn't been a national outrage over this tragedy.

I don't remember hearing about this, and neither did the hundreds of people who retweeted. This, and other tragedies such as the disappearances in Mexico, are tossed around for a few minutes before we forget about them. 

What about bringing back our girls? Does anyone remember that?

I asked some of these questions to my followers on Twitter, and one very smart woman said that many emphasize with the tragedy in France because it reminds them of 9/11. That makes sense - I've seen so many people compare France's support of us during 9/11 to our support of them now.

But again, the common tropes: brown people initiating the violence, white people being among those who suffer. Is that why we care so much? Are we only able to care about a tragedy when we've experienced something similar? Some might say that it's a basic human trait, to be able to connect to someone who has experienced similar issues as us.

But why can't we recognize this? Why can't we say that our vision has been clouded since 9/11, which is where the knee jerk reaction comes from, but that we will also grieve for others who have suffered from violence?

Why don't we ever discuss the fact that we don't care about brown people and their suffering?

I could give many examples of this. There's the fact that there was a huge uproar and Europe about taking in Syrian refugees. Many people didn't want to do it, despite the large amount of suffering that these refugees faced. Their response was that there wasn't enough money.

After 9/11, no one mentioned money. We went to war. Even now, when people start discussing the chance of another war, no one is talking about the trillions of dollars of debt that we're in. Obviously, this isn't amount money.

Or I could bring up the Charleston shootings earlier this year, and how there wasn't an option to change our Facebook icons for that. Dylan Roof was not treated like a terrorist. This tragedy wasn't treated like a terrorist attack, even though this man expressed ideas shared with the KKK, a terrorist organization.

They bought him lunch. They escorted him nicely.

Instead of the national grief, all of the people posting on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, there were debates. Debates over whether or not this had to do with race. I honestly don't remember people caring the way that they care about France. No other countries expressed their grief about this event that "shook our nation." 

Is it because the victims of the Charleston shootings were black? Because the terrorist was white?

Another point that was brought up on Twitter is that the attacks in France ruin the idealistic vision we have painted, as a society. In movies, commercials, books, everything Paris is the city of lights, of love. The streets sparkle, and the Eiffel Tower shines down on you. Paris was everything we hoped to be. 

Charleston, within our own borders and attempting to sweep institutional racism under the rug, was something that we were trying so desperately to ignore. 

In turn, while I urge you to continue to pray for Paris, I remind you that stories of violence and terrorism are delivered to us in a prepackaged container. We, as Americans from a Western country, see brown people as disposable and violent. That's the way the story will be framed to us. If a story doesn't fit the container, it isn't told.

So, no. I will not be changing my Facebook icon. I will grieve for France, but also for Kenya, for Baghdad, for Beirut. I will grieve for all of the people affected, including the Muslims and Syrians who will now be targeted even more so than before. 

Because, ultimately, pain doesn't care about color. We're the ones who do.

questions about 9/11

I don't remember September 11th. I was a year old when it happened.

I remember going to school and listening to survivors in the sixth grade. I remember watching documentaries on TV when I was eleven, the small stories that older family members gave me when I was thirteen. But I don't actually remember it. And that's why, whenever someone says to never forget, I feel guilty. Really guilty.

Because, even though I wasn't there and can't empathize completely, I still get the fact that a lot of people lost their lives. That this was an action of hatred. Innocent people did not deserve the things that happened to them. People didn't deserve to lose family members or be absolutely terrified.

But...I can't connect to it the way that most adults can. I just can't I don't get why this one day, over all of the other days where many Americans lost their lives, has a gigantic cloud hanging over it. Why every channel blocks out several hours dedicated to it. I don't mean to be disrespectful - the opposite, really. I want to understand why so that I might be better next year.

Memorializing 9/11 in school isn't a bad thing at all. But it's always made me feel weird. I know that I should feel bad. I should feel so horrible and remorseful when we watch videos of people jumping out of windows, and buildings falling. And I do. But I feel like it isn't enough. I want to do something. To have discussions. To try, with all of my power, to prevent this from happening again.

When I think of 9/11, I think of the War on Terror. I don't know if I'm supposed to or not. I don't know how I'm supposed to feel or what I'm supposed to think on this day.

Because I didn't live through the event, I don't think I have the ability to separate it from everything that came after.  In history class, we are taught that most events cause a reaction. The Middle Ages caused the Renaissance (some might say.) The dropping of the Atomic Bomb ended World War 2. People say that everything changed after September 11th.

How? Why?

I feel weird about 9/11 because we don't really talk about it, and it's probably because "everyone" remembers. We talk about how we were impacted - we as in those of us who are not Muslim, or look the same way as the attackers. But I never hear discussion about how our country moved ahead afterward. People tell me that the country changed, but how?

This is the only United States that I've known. I want to know how it used to be.

It's hard for me to separate the hatred and prejudice against Muslims from this event. It's hard for me to separate advanced security protocols and all of the war that happened for most of my childhood from 9/11. All of the war and hardships that followed after seem to be linked to what our country did after 9/11. We don't talk about that.

Yes, 9/11 was horrific in so many ways. So many people were hurt or harmed and still suffer today. But. I feel like everyone memorializes for hours each year, and we don't actually talk...well, about anything? Do we need to? I guess not.

I realize that this might be because it all happened not too long ago. We don't have the same context because we're too close to the event for this to be taught the way I learn about European history at school. But I wish that people would just say that. I wish that I could ask questions and have discussions about this. Whenever I see it happening, people are usually told to be quiet.

We talk about the immediate aftermath, like how firefighters were down in the city for weeks and weeks. How they kept looking. How the entire country was grieving, as one. I've been to the memorial, and I've seen all of the names. I've watched people grieve, and have along with them.

I think that it's so confusing for me because I can sort of see 9/11 objectively. I don't have many ties to it, since I don't remember anything about the day, and didn't really learn about it until these past few years. It's easy for me to say that it's weird that we memorialize 9/11 when we bomb other countries because I wasn't bombed.

It's easy for me to think about this in all sorts of different contexts, to think of questions that no one really answers:

Why don't we commemorate other days, like Pearl Harbor, the way we do 9/11?

Why are we never to forget 9/11, but not the Holocaust or slavery or the Trail of Tears?

Why do we seem to move on from shootings like Columbine and Sandy Hook, but never forget 9/11?

Why?

Why?

Why?

No one really has answers.

I feel like we only speak about 9/11 from one viewpoint every year. The events were done in hatred, but the people who did them thought they were doing right. When we kill people in other countries, we do it in the name of freedom, but they probably see it as an act of hatred. I don't understand.

That's not to say that the lives lost don't deserve to be commemorated, because they absolutely do. It just confuses me, and I want answers. I want to make sure that something as horrible and awful as this never happens again. And, if there's any chance that it would, how is my generation to respond?

Is talking about how our country changed, how we moved forward, disrespectful just because it makes people angry? And, if we can't talk about it because it's disrespectful, how will we know how to avoid/handle a situation like this if it ever happens again?

xoxo, 

Camryn