Monday Morning Crisis Quarterback

A man biked to a Del Taco restaurant in San Bernardino, California this afternoon armed with two handguns.  He walked inside, walked over to a table and opened fire on a family of four.  He then shot himself in the head.  The father of the family died at the scene, and an 8-year-old boy died shortly after arriving at the hospital.  A 5-year-old boy and his 29-year-old mother are in critical condition, as is the 56-year-old shooter (there are conflicting reports, with some indicating that he has also died).  Reports indicate he is the woman's stepfather.

This story is horrific, of course.  In the next day or two we'll be hearing more about the relationships among the shooter and the victims and about what his motive may have been. 

In this lull while we wait for more information, it's interesting to contemplate why we think that more information will be helpful. If we think about it for any length of time, it's obvious that, at least for most of us, there is no motive strong enough to justify this kind of premeditated violence, particularly against children.  No matter what we find out, this story is not going to stop being horrific, so why do we care?  Most would chalk it up to macabre fascination with other people's tragedies, but I think there is more than that. 

We generally think of family members as "safe."  They are not the people who, when we see them walking towards us on the street late at night, cause us to cross the street.  We may or may not like our families, but most of us are not afraid of them.  At the same time, we also know that there are people who, with good reason, are afraid of members of their family.  Abusive spouses and parents, disturbed children and other violent relatives are out there, and their families, quite reasonably, fear them.

For those of us who aren't afraid of any of our relatives, it's hard to fathom that someone close to us could try to kill us in broad daylight in public.  This incident must be different in some way, and we want to know how.  This is not just because of morbid curiosity.  We are looking for evidence that, while we don't fear our families, this family had a reason to fear the mother's stepfather.  If we can figure out the motive, we can reassure ourselves of two things:   First, that the same motive doesn't exist in our own families, and second that this was that "other" kind of family -- one of the ones where people knew they should be afraid.

Why do we need that reassurance?  Because the alternative makes us want to hide under our beds and never come out.  The alternative is that any family, anywhere, any time can go from peaceful to violent.  The alternative is that the people we consider "safe" are not safe, in which case we are not safe, even if we think we are.  No one can live a normal life believing that violence could erupt without warning at any moment.  We all know, somewhere in the back of our minds, that random violence does occur, but for the most part we live life as though it doesn't, and we don't want evidence to the contrary, thank you very much.

I don't know anything about this family -- not even their names.  In the days ahead we'll find out whether this attack was at all predictable.  Whether it was or not, however, will not change the fact that half of this family is dead, and the other half will have to live with that loss and this traumatic experience for the rest of their lives.

This week, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has a study from New York University about the affect of traumatic exposure on children's IQs.  Specifically, researchers looked at the IQ scores of children in Chicago who lived in a neighborhood where a murder had taken place, whether or not they had witnessed it, and compared them to children in the same neighborhood who were not tested close to the time of a murder.  They found that, for 7-9 days following the murder, children's IQs dipped about one half of a standard deviation, or 7-8 points.  Given the disparity in crime rates and demographics in American neighborhoods, the researchers surmise that this effect might account for half of the noted gap between the average IQ scores of African American students and their White counterparts.

For people who work with children, and for people who work with people exposed to trauma, this finding is not particularly shocking.  Anyone who has experienced a homicide in their neighborhood can tell you that they feel distracted and not 100% functional for a week or a week and a half afterwards.  Educators have long noticed the dip in academic performance for children who are experiencing stress at home.  The notion that this can be measured scientifically is not much of a stretch.

Apparently, for some people, however, it is.  The Reuters story on this new study is followed by a number of comments, some of which are really disturbing.  One commenter writes:
There are many things wrong with this comment, and I am only going to skim the surface.  The least offensive reading of this is that the commenter misunderstands how the study itself was conducted and presumes that the children who were not exposed to homicide lived in a different neighborhood than those who were.  The most offensive reading is that the commenter is so steeped in their own privilege and the societal racism that comes with it that they cannot even imagine that a study that exposes that privilege and suggests that poor, African-American children may actually be just as smart as anyone else has scientific validity.  My personal opinion is that both of these things are true, at least to some extent.  There is, however, another factor at work here -- a really fervent attempt by the commenter to distance themselves from the violence itself. 

Nobody wants to live in a neighborhood with a high homicide rate.  If you do not live in such a neighborhood now, you also would like some reassurance that you are not at risk of winding up in one so you can feel secure and not spend a lot of time and stress worrying about it.  If you acknowledge that it is some combination of luck, inherited privilege and societal discrimination that has some people living in those neighborhoods and you not living there, then that opens up the possibility that your luck might change.  You might someday live there, and might someday be in danger.  But if your living situation is caused by something inate -- say, inborn intelligence -- then you are not at risk.  You don't have to worry about living in such a neighborhood because only dumb people live there, and you are not dumb. 

The fact that I can explain why someone would think this way, and how it relates to an understandable wish to distance ourselves from violence, should not be misconstrued to mean that I agree with the commenter or approve of what they wrote.  I think this comment is truly repulsive.  We all have a natural urge to distance ourselves from certain types of things.  In this instance, if it's all the same to you, I'll distance myself from this commenter and their way of thinking.

image copyright istockphoto/akajeff

Last Monday, a pipe bomb combined with gasoline exploded in back of the Islamic Center of Northeast Florida in Jacksonville.  Sixty people were worshiping inside at the time.  No one was injured, although the building suffered minor damage and filled with smoke for a short time. A $20,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the bomber, who was captured on surveillance camera.  He appears to be a middle aged white male.

The national media has not picked up the story of the Jacksonville mosque bombing to any great extent.  If you do a Google News search for "Jacksonville Mosque" you will turn up numerous stories from the Florida press, as well as an assortment of national blogs discussing the fact that the national media has ignored this story, but not much else.  Most of these national blogs note the implied prejudice of major news outlets failing to pick up what certainly appears to be an attempted terrorist attack that could have killed 60 people, but whose victims are Muslim.

I don't disagree with these bloggers.  However, I think even they are guilty of what scholars sometimes call "othering."  They are outraged at the act itself, and at the media for failing to cover it.  But they don't go as far as to express empathy with the community that was attacked.  They are reacting to the politics, but not to the impact of the attack itself.  Someone has attacked those "other" people, and we (presumably "typical") people are outraged by the attack and outraged at the media.  But we aren't caring for the victims.

For the religiously affiliated among you, try to imagine how you might feel if your church or synagogue were attacked.  How safe would you feel at the next service?  How confident would you feel parking in the parking lot?  How much sleep would you lose?  How much grief might you feel for actual damage done?  And how much anticipatory grief might you feel at the thought of damage that might yet be done?

Now imagine that the bulk of those who support your congregation expressed that support by insisting that the news cover the incident.  Surely you'd appreciate that.  There's nothing wrong with taking a firm stand that such attacks are unacceptable regardless of who the victims are, and that media should report them without bias.  But wouldn't you want some of those same folks to stop by your church or synagogue or your house?  Wouldn't you want them to try to understand your fear and how very personally you took this attack?  Wouldn't you want people to stand up, not just for you, but also with you?

I have nothing against the bloggers who have pointed out the media's bias.  It needs to be done.  But it is only the first step.  I challenge my blogging brethren not just to cover the politics of this attack and its coverage, but to really try to understand how it feels to be a victim of it, and bring that experience to their readers.  Until we are able, as a blogosphere, to see victims of anti-Islamic violence as "us" rather than "them," it will continue to be easy for people to turn that othering to violence.

A man with years of tax troubles and disputes with the IRS crashed a small plane into the building that houses the IRS office in Austin, Texas this morning.  Two people were injured and one is unaccounted for.  It's not clear from the current coverage what happened to the pilot, although it seems likely that he is dead.  Before crashing the plane, he had set fire to his home and left a six page letter/blog on the Internet explaining his actions.

Authorities have announced that this appears to be an isolated incident and that there is no ongoing threat.  The Department of Homeland Security released a statement that said,

We do not yet know the cause of the plane crash.  At this time, we have no reason to believe there is a nexus to terrorist activity. We continue to gather more information, and are aware there is additional information about the pilot's history.

Press coverage has also emphasized the description of this as a suicide, and most outlets are referring to his writing as a suicide note and using words like "rambling" and "incoherent" to describe it.

I find this spin absolutely fascinating.  Towards the end of his letter, the pilot wrote,

It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country. . . . I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. . . . I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored.

If you read his writing all the way through (you can download it here), you will disagree with his conclusions but you will not find it hard to understand at all.  It is not incoherent.  He is very clear that he is angry at the government, why he is angry at the government, and that he is about to do this to draw attention to his grievances, cause other people to pay attention to his thinking and inspire others to also kill themselves in similar attacks.

Let's suppose you didn't know anything about this story.  Suppose someone told you that a man, angry at the United States government and believing that its citizens should rise up against it, killed himself by flying an airplane into a building housing a government office.  He left behind writing detailing his belief that the government is corrupt and encouraging others to similarly die for the cause of freedom.  What is your mental image?  Mine is not of a computer engineer.  It's of a terrorist.

So why does DHS say this isn't terrorism?  And why is the media reporting it as an incoherent suicide?  Why does it seem so important to portray this person as crazy, while others, such as the Fort Hood shooter, are terrorists? 

The practical difference is that this man has no links to any organized group that anyone can tell.  When DHS says this isn't terrorism, they really mean this isn't organized terrorism, and they are right.  There is also, frankly, and element of religious and/or racial profiling.  Terrorists are Muslim and come from the Middle East, southern Asia or Northern Africa.  Americans can't be terrorists.

The other reason it's important to us to maintain this distinction, however, is that it makes us feel safe.  We have an image of terrorists that is truly frightening and represents an ongoing danger.  The thing that keeps us from being scared out of our minds is that, for the most part, we believe them to be "over there" and not here.  Those who may be here fit a certain profile and hence are easy to catch.

This pilot, on the other hand, isn't "over there."  If he's a terrorist, then there's a much greater risk of terrorism than we would like to think about.  There is no way to keep them out, because they're already in, and there is no way to figure out who they are.  So we tell ourselves that this guy was crazy and suicidal.  We know such people exist, and even that there is some danger from them, but they don't represent anything near the threat that terrorists do.  They are isolated incidents.

A certain amount of psychological self-preservation is a reasonable thing.  We do all sorts of things to prevent ourselves from being paralyzed by fear, and that is what allows us to function.  Sometimes, however, it pays to take a step back and ask whether we are protecting ourselves from fear or simply being oblivious to the truth.

On July 28, 2006, a man took held a teenage girl at gunpoint, forced his way into the Seattle Jewish Federation offices and started shooting.  One woman was killed and five others were injured.  The gunman, who had a history of mental illness, told a dispatcher he was tired of Jews, Israel and American foreign policy, and he was hoping to get on CNN.  Today, a jury rejected his insanity defense and found him guilty at his second trial (the first one ended in a hung jury).

This was not the first shooting at a place associated with Judaism in the United States, and it was not the last.  Over the last 15 years or so, security has been increasing steadily at synagogues, community centers and museums.  Here in Ann Arbor, you have to show picture ID to get into the Jewish Community Center.  Many synagogues have police presence during holiday services.

All of us who frequent Jewish community buildings know why the extra security is there.  At the same time, we don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about it.  We tell ourselves that it's to guard against something that, realistically, isn't going to happen anyway.  We know there are those "out there" who, because of ignorance or illness, think that shooting at Jews is a good thing to do.  We just don't think they are anywhere near us.

I remember distinctly how I felt when I heard about the shooting in Seattle.  My family lived in Seattle for four months about ten years ago, and we've visited several times, so I felt some connection.  More than that, however, I remember imagining very vividly what the scene must have looked like.  I placed the shooting in my mind at building that looked just like the local JCC.  I could very much picture what happened and where it happened, even though I'd never been there and the building in Seattle probably looks nothing like this.

This is what having a personal connection to a traumatic event does to us.  While everyone who heard about this event knew it was terrible, those of us with ties to the Jewish community had much easier access to the details of what made it awful.  Anyone can, if they try, put themselves in a traumatic scene in their mind's eye.  We just got there much more easily.

I was therefore somewhat surprised when I read about the verdict in this case.  I wasn't surprised that the jury found the gunman guilty, although I don't have enough of the details to have an opinion about whether he was legally insane or not.  What surprised me was that, before I read about the verdict, I had totally forgotten about this incident.  Part of what allows me to go to my Temple on a regular basis is the ability to not vividly imagine an actual shooting when I do, and so my mind has given itself permission to file this away until needed.

Nevertheless, when I heard about the verdict, I immediately saw that same scene that I had imagined 3 years ago in my mind.  For me, that is what represents the trauma of this shooting.  Oddly, I have a vivid visual memory of something that I never saw.  In a few days or weeks, the Seattle shooting will be filed away again.  Soon enough, I and many other people, will convince ourselves that we are guarding against something that, realistically, isn't going to happen anyway.  Until the next time.

Note: The picture above is of Pam Waechter, the director of the Seattle Jewish Federation's annual campaign, who was killed in the shooting.  Ms. Waechter was a Jew by choice, having been raised Lutheran.  As Richard Silverstein wrote at the time,

It is terribly ironic that a woman who elects to convert to Judaism in order to share the joy and fate of the Jewish people should pay the ultimate price for that commitment.

May her memory be a blessing.