They are us

Friday, Jul. 15, 2016

Where is all the outrage?

Last Nov. 13, after gunmen and suicide bombers struck in Paris, killing 130 people and wounding hundreds, there were front-page headlines, and my Facebook page was flooded with people who changed their cover photos to the French flag.

Nothing of the sort occurred July 3 when  a minivan packed with explosives killed more than 140 people in Baghdad.

Please don’t misinterpret my point here: I am horrified by both incidents, with their senseless violence and loss of innocent lives. I am simply questioning why each one wasn’t met by the same type of outrage, why the attacks in Paris generated so much more sympathy among my Facebook friends and the local media, which carried follow-up stories for days. 

Following the bombing in Baghdad, however, not one friend posted about it on Facebook, and the local daily newspapers ran the story on inside pages. Which leads me back to my point: Why are we so much more sympathetic to the victims who were killed in Paris than to those who were killed in Baghdad? It can’t be the level of carnage – roughly the same number of people were killed. Other similarities were that both were carried out by suicide bombers, (although there were also gunmen in Paris), and the perpetrators in both cases were said to be members of the Islamic State.

So why did we cry for those in Paris, but merely shrugged off the news of the bombing in Baghdad? I’m going to unmask what I think is the invisible elephant in the room: Most Americans identify with the Parisians because of our European Christian roots, whereas Iraqis are Arabic and Muslim. It’s the “us” versus “them” mentality, where “we” deserve more than “they” because – well, because we are we and they are they, and we’ll defend our own first and those others can have the leftovers, if there are any. 

I do know that I’m generalizing. Many American citizens are other ethnicities and different religions (or no religion), and the same could probably be said of Iraqis. Thank you to those of you who were about to make that point. It gives me hope that I’m wrong, even though I think it’s a sure bet that I’m not the only one who didn’t call a local mosque to find out if they would be holding a memorial service of some sort that I could attend to offer my condolences and express my sympathies.

This, I think, is the primary reason we don’t all get along: We still see “us” versus “them.” 

It’s ironic that I’m writing this the week that Sunday’s Gospel reading was the story of the Good Samaritan. One commentary I read hypothesized that the priest and the Levite both asked themselves “What will happen to me if I help the wounded traveler?” whereas the Samaritan asked, “What will happen to him if I don’t?”

In the case of calling a mosque to find out if there was a memorial service, I think subconsciously I was concerned what would happen to me – would they be insulted, would they laugh at me, would they yell?  I must admit that I would have had none of these fears if I had been calling a Christian house of worship with a similar query.

Still, I wonder what would have happened if I had reached out to express my sympathy? For the person answering the phone, might it have been a bright point that I, as one of “them,” had ventured to become, if only for the space of the telephone call, one of “us” who was mourning the lives lost?