A Reflection on Race Following the Shooting in Uvalde

June 3, 2022

(Yes, there is a significant lag time between when I wrote this observation and posting it.)

A couple years ago I wrote and shared a reflection on my observations of my social media feed following the Super Bowl halftime show when Shakira and Jennifer Lopez performed. Now, my social media feed has friends and contacts from different parts of my life who live around the world. Yet, there was a noticeable difference in the responses of my friends who are BIPOC (Biracial, Indigenous, People Of Color) and my friends who are White. A couple people pushed back on it, both of whom are White. Among those who affirmed what I wrote were both Whites and BIPOC.

I noticed something during the week after the shooting in Uvalde. Both on social media and in person, I observed that my colleagues and friends who are Black (not just BIPOC, but specifically African-American/Black) were not as shocked and devasted by the shooting in Uvalde as White and even Brown people seemed to be. It seemed to affect Black people differently; their response seemed more muted. They still grieved, because it’s a horrible thing that happened. However, they didn’t appear as surprised that a horrible thing happened.

I checked this out with one colleague and friend, who is Black, and he agreed that my observation was accurate, at least for him. He expects bad things to happen; that is just life. That's been his experience as a Black man in an unjust, racist world. There was still grief over the lives lost, and he offered me care and support, which I appreciated. But I could also tell it hadn’t affected him as much. I wonder if this is because Black people know much better than White people that the world isn’t fair, that nothing is off-limits, that the systems in power do not value life, any life.

I haven’t heard anything said on any media outlet, but I wonder about race. The children who died were Brown. Would the police officers have been quicker to go inside if the children were White? 

I wonder if Black persons feel that the response to Uvalde outweighed and was noisier than the response to Buffalo, not just because the victims were children instead of older adults but also because they were lighter skinned. I wonder about the response I saw and heard about stricter gun laws after Uvalde that I didn’t hear or see after Buffalo. On the racial hierarchy scale, do we value Brown children more than Black adults?

I wonder if, while my friend expects bad things to happen, and other Black individuals seem to well recognize that society does not value their lives, White individuals seem to still think that their lives matter, that bad things should not happen or be expected. We (White people) often still live under the illusion that we have some measure of control over our lives when reality is that we do not have as much control as we think we do.