Our Grief Is Always Political

And our lack of empathy is a signal of our bigotry

J.S. Park - Hospital Chaplain

asked, “when is our grief political?”. His answer is always and I believe he is right. Photos like this remind us that colonization, and its enforced patterns of segregation and stratification were exceptionally effective.

A friend posted the photo above and wrote:

An officer fired rubber coated bullets at people who were protesting. One rubber coated bullet hit a child in his eye. The rubber coated bullet shattered his eye and pushed what was left into his brain. The rubber coated bullet passed through the brain and settled against the inside of the boy’s skull. This is a lithograph of the X-Ray of the skull of the lifeless little boy who was murdered by the government.

Some of you might ask if this happened in Syria, Libya, South Africa, Haiti or Myanmar. Or the USA. Or Gaza. Another child is dead.

Does the location and nationality of the child matter?

The answer to that question is also “yes” because our grief, anger, sadness, rage, compassion and empathy has been put through the sieve of supremacy. Hierarchies of domination strain out the humanity of those who don’t sit atop throne of race, class, gender and environment. So exactly whose head was hit by this matters because we don’t know if those people are worth our tears.