CULTURE

“Don’t Talk About the Tragedy” Is The American Mantra

People are trained to become incensed if you point out the harsh realities of our country

There’s a short story by Shirley Jackson called ‘The Lottery’ which was published in The New Yorker in 1948. I remember reading this story in college, and even then, the subject matter made the class uncomfortable. If you haven’t read it, click on the above link because I’m about to spoil it for you.

The majority of the story depicts the preparation and building excitement for an annual event in a rural American town. For most of the story, the mood seems festive. All you know is that there’s something called “the lottery,” and everyone in town is certain that this is the kind of tradition upon which all of their future prosperity depends.

It’s only in the last few paragraphs that you discover that the “winner” of the lottery will be stoned to death by the rest of the residents in order to ensure a bountiful harvest. Naturally, the person who is selected is immediately able to comprehend the barbarity of the tradition, but by then, it’s too late.

This is a relatively simple concept for a short story, but it’s appalling how well it encapsulates modern American ideology. Today, we live in a country where you’re playing a lottery every time you send your kids to school. In the back of your mind, you wonder, “Will today be the day that my children are sacrificed?”

Mass shootings are not the only place that our children are put at risk. However, if you try to discuss the kind of institutional changes that would help avert senseless tragedies, it’s somehow considered inappropriate. The reality is that our society is content to sacrifice people. Our country has to wake up and realize that these things don’t always happen to “somebody else.”

The spitting incident

Last week, a boy spit on my daughter in Spanish class. Naturally, school officials say, “We take this very seriously,” but the truth is they don’t. They just don’t.

The good news is that the boy has been separated from my daughter. He now knows to cross to the other side of the hallway when she approaches. Still, in a decent world, more would have been done.

The most important thing for me with this whole issue was managing my own emotions. It does no good to go storming into the school. It does no good to swear at anyone. I do not condone any form of retaliatory violence.

Honestly, I’ve felt like crying a lot over the last few days. I have an intense pain behind my eyes that will not go away.

My conversation with the police officer

Once I learned about the incident, I immediately reported it to the school resources officer. He called me a few days later. I have to say that I’m rather irritated by the call.

It was instantly apparent that the officer didn’t want to have to deal with something like this. We’re a few days from the end of the school year. I assume filing charges against the kid would involve all sorts of “tedious” paperwork.

From the moment he started speaking, I could tell his mind was made up that this wasn’t an “actionable” event. He said a couple of weird things. First of all, he misquoted my daughter and suggested that it was “an enormous gob of spit.” But that wasn’t what my daughter told me. My daughter didn’t use sensationalized language.

Then the officer went on to mention that he’d never had issues with my daughter before. I don’t know why that came into the conversation because she was the one who had been the target of an attack. Naturally, he wouldn’t have had problems with her. She’s a former student of the month. She’s polite, kind, intelligent, and she doesn’t deserve to be spit on.

As the call progressed, I felt I was being managed. The officer really wanted me to “just let it go.” The boy’s excuse was that he was “blowing a bubble” (apparently, it’s acceptable to chew gum in school these days), and some spatter from the bubble might have gotten on my daughter.

I had my say

Again, it was difficult for me to have this conversation without screaming profanities. I was in an elevated emotional state. My first objective was to remain courteous, but I was very angry.

I could tell I got under the officer’s skin at the end of the call. I said, “Well, obviously, the boy is going to deny that he did this. If he’s got an issue with my daughter, of course, he’s going to use ‘blowing a bubble’ as a pretext for spitting on her. It seems to me that his bubble story is an admission of guilt.”

The police officer wanted to say more, but I wasn’t done.

“Let me tell you where I’m coming from,” I said. “A year ago, I was one of the first people to get the message from the school that said the little girl was missing. I got my dog and went out to look for her. I was one of the first people on the scene when the body was found.”

Silence from the police officer.

“Now, my family is an immigrant family. That means we’ve been the target of hostility for the last seven years. That’s why I’m inclined to believe there is an element of racism when some white boy spits on my daughter in Spanish class. I think the reason that our community is pulling the raped and murdered bodies of children out of the woods is because our officials fail to take action when boys show blatant disrespect in the classroom. You act like it’s ‘no big deal,’ and then when a girl gets murdered you say, ‘there was nothing we could do to prevent this.’”

After this, I got a sense of seething anger from the phone. It felt like the same hostility that emanates out of every politician when he says, “now is not the time to talk about gun control” after every mass shooting.

The wrong course of action has been normalized in these situations and our children are the ones who have to pay.

We have it in our power to make a better world

A few weeks ago, there was a terrible tragedy that involved the murder of a police officer a few hours from where I live. The officer was killed by an AR-15.

Days after this unconscionable event, several local police chiefs issued statements requesting more community support. However, I didn’t see any police statements thanking progressives for their efforts to get AR-15s banned.

In my community, you’ll see many yard signs that say “Back the Blue.” These signs are often next to “Trump 2020” or “Trump 2024” signs.

There’s often hostility between the police community and progressives.

Why?

If we had reasonable gun control we’d likely save the lives of police officers. So, why should the police clash with progressives? Why aren’t police thanking gun control activists?

‘Build the wall’ was always a white supremacist slogan

Here’s the reality of the modern United States of America: white supremacy is normalized. For years, people have come up to my children and screamed, “This is America, you should speak English here!” Or police, noticing that my Latina wife was driving a nice car, trailed her for blocks. Or they say, “Go back to where you’re from!” Or they say, “Build the wall!”

The “14 words” is a white supremacist slogan that declares a right to protect the Aryan bloodline. “The Great Replacement theory” is often promoted in the media without causing any kind of a stir. The phrase “Build the Wall” speaks directly to that white supremacist tradition. It’s not about border security because most people come into our country via airplane. The border wall concept was popular because it proposed a means to keep non-Aryan people out of the US.

However, our schools don’t teach any of this because it falls under the fabricated “That’s CRT!” hysteria. Girls are sent home for wearing clothing that’s “too revealing” but boys are allowed to prance about in their “Let’s Go Brandon!” shirts.

How are you teaching “respect” if you allow that behavior?

Denying there is a problem is the conservative way

Although he lost the state, the county where I live cast more votes for Trump. Police officers are generally more inclined to be conservative. This creates a hostile and unproductive environment where human sacrifice becomes a certainty.

Based on national and local trends, there’s a high probability that the school resource officer is a Trump supporter. Trump was recently found liable for sexual abuse. I don’t think any Trump supporter would be inclined to take any kind of attack on my daughter seriously.

If I say, “Our school needs to show that ‘Build the Wall’ is a slogan designed to appeal to white supremacists,” the local conservative community will respond with, “Don’t bring politics into school.”

But it’s not politics, it’s a simple fact.

I suspect that the school resource officer thought I was getting political when I suggested racism might have played a part in the attack on my daughter that he wanted to sweep under the rug. In his mind, in turn, he would then have the “right” to feel affronted.

This is the absurd psychology that comes from normalizing white supremacy. Unfortunately, that’s the state of things in the US. You get these deranged human beings who refuse to ban military-grade weapons, and then point the finger at the anti-gun activists when police get shot. You get men who say, “that’s just boys being boys,” and then they insist, “there’s nothing we could have done” when you drag the bodies of murdered girls out of the woods.

The next time somebody says, “There’s nothing we could have done,” you have to put them in their place. You have to reply with, “There’s ABSOLUTELY something we could have done! The problem is that you INSISTED on doing nothing!”

The lottery isn’t equal for everyone

This concept that it’s simply an inescapable tragedy of the world that we have to sacrifice people is beyond appalling. It also disregards the reality that women, minorities, and other vulnerable populations have a much higher chance of being selected.

The white police officer I talked to on the phone who responded to my reasonable comments with hostile silence doesn’t have to worry that anything bad will befall him. He’s more concerned with protecting the white boy from what he thinks is a “frivolous” accusation than protecting my daughter from a legitimate attack.

That’s the American way.

There’s some evidence that the mere act of dragging that boy into the office for a lecture from a police officer might scare him straight. From what my daughter says, he appears to be mollified and she had no reluctance to return to school.

But this isn’t enough. We need a society that is willing to stand and fight for all individuals, not just the privileged members of the dominant group. Sacrificing our children won’t bring a “bountiful harvest.” It’s not true that there’s “nothing we can do.”

We can do something.

The people in power refuse. The people who speak up are shunned.

Let me tell you something: It’s okay to be shunned. It’s okay to make ignorant people with absurd ideas feel uncomfortable. It’s okay to chip away at the tumor of white supremacy that’s been normalized in our country. That nagging whisper inside your head that says, “I didn’t do enough,” speaks the truth.

Let me tell you something else: None of the lies the conservatives tell you will provide any comfort if the number of somebody you love is called up in the lottery.

If you don’t subscribe, you won’t see all my stories. Please subscribe to my emails here.