America First
By TAPTI SEN ‘21
It’s July 1, 2016 in Boston, and I’m dreading my last few weeks of vacation before I return to Bangladesh and school. I log into Instagram for the first time that morning, and my eyes widen at 40 new messages from my friend group chat.
“What’s going on?” I send.
“You haven’t heard?” A friend responds almost immediately.
“No?” I ask confusedly.
“30 people have been taken hostage inside Holey Artisan. Everyone’s saying it’s ISIS,” my friend replies.
My eyes widen, and I immediately start googling the restaurant “Holey Artisan, Bangladesh”. The first thing that comes up is an article from The Dhaka Tribune. Breaking news: 30 people taken hostage inside Holey Artisan in Gulshan, Dhaka, by 5 militants claiming to be ISIL supporters. As I read through the article, my heart fills with fear. As if on autopilot, I turn on the TV.
Except, there’s nothing. Oh wait, there is something, something about yet another scandal Donald Trump has caused in his presidential campaign. But there is nothing about Bangladesh, where everyone is frozen in fear, dreading what will happen next. My parents Skype an hour later, their faces grim, saying that the situation’s not looking good. In 12 hours, I receive another call. 29 people are dead, and even more are injured. But there is nothing about it on any Western news media – nothing except one measly BBC news article.
Here lies my problem: America only cares about America. American news outlets are incredibly focused on what goes on inside the country, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, sometimes, America seems to forget that there’s a world outside of the United States.
In my experience, Milton has not been much different. When the Tree of Life shootings happened, we had an entire assembly dedicated to it and numerous discussions in many of our classes about gun control and anti-semitism the very next day. But the New Zealand shootings happened almost two weeks ago, and I still haven’t heard anyone talking about them, whether in a school-wide discussion, or in my classes. It’s not that the New Zealand shootings are any more or less horrible than what happened in the synagogue, but why are we discussing one and not the other?
New Zealand is still part of the West and tragedies happen in developing countries all the time. I never hear people talking about them. It’s not that the lives of people in the West matter more to people in the West, it’s for a simple reason: tragedies are expected to happen in developing countries. Because it is expected, people don’t blink when they hear news about people dying there because it’s considered a normal aspect of life. I’ve found that it’s only when supposedly safe countries are threatened in some way that people feel the need to speak out about issues like this. It almost feels like human life has less value in countries where violence is a norm.
Of course, I understand that not every person that wrongfully dies can be mourned by everyone because then we would be mourning day and night. But we should think about why some deaths get more attention than others.