how am I, as an over-educated white person, supposed to react<\/a>\u00a0when a police officer murders yet another black man? How are we supposed to react when it happens again and again?<\/p>\nHow can I respond with empathy\u00a0to\u00a0a person in many ways different from\u00a0me, without \u201cwhitesplaining\u201dand being overbearing?<\/p>\n
Well, I know one way not to do it.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t know how many times bloggers are told \u201cdon\u2019t read the comments,\u201d but my eyes always instinctively go after the comments anyway. Tragically, I\u2019ve come to expect\u00a0racism and ignorance in every combox. Those anger me, but they\u2019re part of the landscape. I already know such people exist.<\/p>\n
The comment which enraged me was one I see less often.\u00a0One of the commentators I found implied that the victim\u2019s girlfriend must have been\u00a0lying\u2013 because apparently at first she said \u201cjust a broken tail light\u201d and later \u201cjust a broken tail light and some pot.\u201d<\/p>\n
That, I think, horrifies\u00a0me the most. I can\u2019t bring myself to imagine that kind of callousness. \u00a0How can a person expect that a woman who just witnessed her significant other shot dead in a car, should be able to calmly recite data as if she\u2019d memorized it from a dictionary? And yet, that\u2019s just what some people expect. There\u2019s a certain stripe of human being\u2013\u00a0not a rare stripe, I\u2019m afraid\u2013 who expects someone in the throes of extreme trauma and shock to give a calm, rational recitation of events, or else they\u2019ll assume that person was lying. Survivors of domestic violence, survivors of terrorism, child survivors of abuse are held to the same standard by these people. If their story doesn\u2019t fall out of their mouth in a perfectly calm, error-free account while they are still reeling from their suffering, this kind of person judges them to be suspicious. They decide they must be lying.<\/p>\n
Do these people not know what it\u2019s like to be shocked? I know not everyone endures trauma, but most everyone goes through shock at some point, don\u2019t they? Any shock at all? If I inflated a balloon, tiptoed up behind you and popped it, can\u2019t you imagine how that would feel? Can\u2019t you, in your mind\u2019s eye, imagine what it would be like if that shock were magnified a thousand times, and with it the knowledge that someone you loved was dead, that you\u2019d never see him again, and that the people who killed him might well get away with it?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t even care if it turns out there was some good reason for the police to shoot. There wasn\u2019t, but even if it did turn out that way. Never, ever expect someone in the first throes of trauma to respond calmly with a perfectly coherent story. Never, ever doubt her if she can\u2019t yet. Because, she can\u2019t. That\u2019s not how trauma works. That\u2019s not how being a human being works. Strong emotions interfere with your ability to report events precisely, at first, if you are a human being. Some people can defer the shock of an event and respond calmly, and that doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re lying either, but the former is more common.<\/p>\n
Whatever else happens today, don\u2019t be that person. Show a shred of compassion, and don\u2019t react like that.<\/p>\n
(image via pixabay)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got up too late to read the news online, and ran some errands with my daughter. So I\u2019m just reading the news now, and I\u2019m sick to my stomach. Michael has already posted his own reaction\u2013 how am I, as an over-educated white person, supposed to react\u00a0when a police officer murders yet another black […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2694,"featured_media":271,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[501,485,518,519,284,181,283,54,71,500,497,285],"tags":[521,520,523,525,524,526,431],"class_list":["post-554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compassion","category-conscience","category-cop-on-black-violence","category-mourn-with-those-mourn","category-news","category-politics","category-pro-life","category-story","category-suffering","category-terror","category-violence","category-whole-life","tag-black-lives-matter","tag-cop-on-black-violence","tag-cops","tag-diamond-reynolds","tag-murder","tag-philandro-castile","tag-shooting"],"yoast_head":"\n
How NOT to React to the Philandro Castile Shooting<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I got up too late to read the news online, and ran some errands with my daughter. So I'm just reading the news now, and I'm sick to my stomach. Michael\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2016\/07\/how-not-to-react\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How NOT to React to the Philandro Castile Shooting\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I got up too late to read the news online, and ran some errands with my daughter. So I'm just reading the news now, and I'm sick to my stomach. Michael\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2016\/07\/how-not-to-react\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steel Magnificat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-07-07T20:07:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-07-08T04:10:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/664\/2016\/05\/woman-1006102_640.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"360\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mary Pezzulo\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mary Pezzulo\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2016\/07\/how-not-to-react\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/2016\/07\/how-not-to-react\/\",\"name\":\"How NOT to React to the Philandro Castile Shooting\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-07-07T20:07:07+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-07-08T04:10:02+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/steelmagnificat\/#\/schema\/person\/eefd606fd6f98b01cd46b38fcead458b\"},\"description\":\"I got up too late to read the news online, and ran some errands with my daughter. 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<\/p>\n