The Violence We Notice

Listening to a reporter interview a couple about the Capitol Hill shooting, and subsequent lock down: the reporter asked how their children were impacted by the situation; the wife responded, saying that they intentionally kept the details from their children, and that during the lockdown they were really only concerned with whether or not they had their iPads; she felt that them knowing someone had been shot, or had brought a gun into the Capitol would only serve to needlessly worry them and that preserving the innocence of her 5 and 9 year old was top priority. As a parent, I totally get it.

However, in Inner city neighborhoods, where the pop of gunfire breaks the silence with such regularity that its arrival is met with thoughtless crouches and automatic scurries to find cover, innocence is forgotten, even for a 5 and 9 year old.

In these high crime areas there is little hope of shielding our youth from an ugly reality: death is indiscriminate in its pickings, and closer than you think.

The public shock and anxiety we have been conditioned to respond with when violence finds its home in places we feel should be off limits is noticeably absent when it takes place in Inner city neighborhoods, in these spaces it(violence) is viewed as part of the self inflicted routine of dysfunction, poverty, crime, and apathy. Quite often, we blame the afflicted for their affliction.

That violence, reported with such different tones. Those perpetrating it, and those affected by it are painted with such different strokes depending on where it occurs, and the demographic impacted by it. This is, in and of itself, reason enough for outrage. If the innocence of one is worth protecting and preserving, then surely the innocence of all of our children are worth that same effort. And, in order to protect and preserve, violence should have no place where it goes unnoticed, unchallenged, and no place to call home.