Monday Morning Crisis Quarterback

As you almost certainly know, last Friday a massive explosion rocked Oslo, Norway. Shortly thereafter, a gunman opened fire at a camp run by the Labour Party on a nearby island. In all, 76 people were killed and many more injured. Many of the victims were children.

For a brief time on Friday, it was reported that a previously unknown radical Islamist group had taken responsibility for the attacks. The stories in the mainstream media generally represented two different views of this (we now know incorrect) fact.

View 1 was that this showed how dangerous Muslims in Europe are. View 2 was that this was a case of a small minority of Muslims twisting the religion to suit their own purposes and beliefs, and should not be viewed as typical of all Muslims or the religion itself.

Soon it came out that, in fact, the perpetrator in these attacks was a Norwegian citizen upset over immigration and multiculturalism. Two views quickly emerged about this as well. View 1 holds that this is the inevitable result of dangerous rhetoric on the part of conservatives. View 2 holds that this man is clearly mentally ill, and his actions should not be held against an entire political ideology.

There are certainly parallels between these two sets of views. Either the person responsible is representative of their group or they are the exception but not the rule. But there is one notable difference -- in the first scenario, neither view considers mental illness to be a factor.

What is going on here, in both scenarios, is people's attempt to distance themselves from those responsible. They are not like us. They are other. They are different. That means that we are not at risk of becoming like them, and we are less vulnerable to them because their difference may be easy to detect. In the first scenario, the difference in question is one of religion. American mainstream media is largely a Judeo-Christian business. From that perspective, Muslims, whether a handful of radicals or an entire religion, are not "us."

Once it was clear that the perpetrator was European, however, we regrouped. For those on the political left, it was easy to point to him as being on the political right. For those on the right, however, "othering" him was more difficult. He must be mentally ill.

I actually think that this perpetrator probably is mentally ill. Whether that is the whole story or political ideology also plays a part is open for debate. What is interesting to me, though, is that we tend not to consider that suicide bombers from Al-Qaeda, or Osama Bin Laden, or anyone in that general category may be mentally ill. Some of that is racism. Some of it is the ease of separating ourselves from them if we are not Muslim ourselves.

But if you consider it, the narrative of the Oslo massacre probably should be that these attacks were carried out by a deranged person or persons. What religion or ethnic group they are from is not, from that perspective, all that important.

Last week, word filtered out through what is left of the media here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that police were looking for a woman from Pittsfield Township named Dawn Fital. Pittsfield is the township just southeast of Ann Arbor, between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. Like many areas around here, the homicide rate is incredibly tiny. The Michigan State Police searchable database for 2006 (the most recent year included) shows that there were no homicides. In 2009 (the most recent year for county-wide statistics) there were 9 homicides in the entire county.

At any rate, Dawn Fital went missing on Monday from the apartment she shared with her boyfriend and ex-husband. Police in Indiana picked up her boyfriend on Tuesday after he was spotted digging a hole behind a bank, and he apparently told him he had killed his girlfriend. Her body was found on Thursday in a pond near where the boyfriend was arrested. He has been charged with open murder.

Over the four days between when this story first hit the news on Wednesday and the arraignment on Saturday, there were approximately 12 stories in our local news outlet about it. As much as I'd like to tell you that that's because we are all so stunned that anyone would be killed in our neck of the woods, and while that is not completely irrelevant, I think it is incomplete.

Dawn Fital, a White woman, was allegedly murdered in her own home by someone she lived with, a White man. She was not a criminal, a drug dealer, or a gang banger (and yes, we do have those in Washtenaw County as well). She was not African-American, and she was not male. She was not "supposed" to be a homicide victim around here.

But think about that for a moment. Because if Dawn Fital was not "supposed" to be murdered, that implies that someone else was. The fact that Fital does not meet the typical statistical profile of a homicide victim may be notable, but it should not make her death more important than that of any other person. Everyone who is murdered has a family and friends. Everyone is a human being.

The thing that strikes me -- or perhaps triggers me -- about Dawn Fital's death is that I can count on one hand the number of female homicide victims in Washtenaw County in the 9 years I have lived here. Every one of them was a victim of domestic violence. So in that sense, I guess Fital does fit the profile. The problem is the existence of the profile, and a society that in any way condones a pattern where Black men are disposable as victims of violence in general, and women are disposable as victims of violence by their partners.

Imagine, if you will, that an American, motivated by hatred of, let's say, Roman Catholics, drove to New York City and parked a car full of explosives outside St. Patrick's Cathedral during a funeral, only to be caught by the FBI on a tip from a bar employee who had heard the man ranting about Catholics earlier. Surely this would be a big story. It wouldn't take more than a day for it to hit the news, and we'd be hearing major coverage.

Now let's substitute a few facts. Instead of Catholics, let's insert Muslims. Instead of New York, let's move to Dearborn, Michigan -- the Detroit suburb with the highest concentration of Arab-Americans in the United States. Now the plot can't be against St. Patrick's, of course, so we'll move it to the Islamic Center of America -- the largest mosque in the Detroit metropolitan area. The rest of the facts are the same. What kind of press coverage do you expect?

I hope your expectations aren't very high, because this actually happened on Monday. It didn't hit the media even locally until this morning, six days after the arrest and four days after the man was arraigned. It took the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) releasing a press statement to get anyone's attention. It's not the top story in Michigan news even now that it has gotten some coverage.

I find this particularly poignant given that Americans have been watching round-the-clock coverage of the unrest in Egypt this week. My Facebook page has lit up with postings asking me to sign various petitions asking our government to stand with the people of Egypt. I'd like to suggest that we might like to stand with Americans of Egyptian extraction as well. The situations are not the same, certainly. But I can imagine nothing more dehumanizing than being the target of a mass murder plot, foiled at the last moment, and it not even registering as a blip on anyone's radar screen.

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.