if you mourn only for the deaths of white people, your empathy is broken. and racist.
icon: "snarling (a photo of a snow leopard snarling in profile with teeth bared, whiskers back, and ears flattened)"
I realized today that I give a lot of seemingly compassionate people the benefit of the doubt when they don't deserve it. I assume that the reason that they don't talk about or publicly express any empathy for the many, many black people, trans people, disabled people, and women who are murdered in their own country, state, city (often at the hands of those who are supposed to protect or love them) is that they don't want to talk about death or murder or torture. I subconsciously assumed that they maybe can't deal with how awful it is, maybe they are too emotionally fragile. I can understand that; sometimes that is me.
But no. Now that some white people got killed in a different city, a different country, a different continent, these same people are all focusing on death with expressions of deep emotion, showing solidarity by covering their face with a flag. Clearly they are capable of talking about suffering, of expressing empathy publicly. They just don't feel like that about black people. Maybe they don't know that trans, disabled, and female people are murdered regularly and that's why they don't show any care about that, but there has been enough national coverage of the death toll of being black in the US that I really doubt that could be true about black people. So if you're a white person who hasn't shown any empathy or mourning or symbols of solidarity for black people killed in the US in the past year and you're doing that for those killed in Paris*, I'm noticing, and I'm judging you.
*Note: obviously if you have a personal connection, that's different. It always hurts more when it is your friend who is hurt or in danger.
See also:
http://www.outwithgeorge.com/blog/2015/11/14/our-mourning-is-broken-paris-and-privilege
http://stateofmind13.com/2015/11/14/from-beirut-this-is-paris-in-a-world-that-doesnt-care-about-arab-lives/
http://m.mic.com/articles/128551/terrorist-suicide-bombing-attack-on-beirut-lebanon-kills-43-and-injures-hundreds
https://newmatilda.com/2015/11/14/paris-attacks-highlight-western-vulnerability-and-our-selective-grief-and-outrage/
http://www.countercurrents.org/swanson141115.htm
http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/why-our-conversations-about-paris-have-been-broken-from-the-start/