19 People Shot and Injured at New Orleans Parade

[Content Note: Violence; guns; racism.]

Yesterday, at a Mothers' Day second-line parade in New Orleans, as many as three shooters opened fire, injuring two children, seven women, and ten men. The injuries ranged from minor grazes to severe wounds; so far, there have been no fatalities. Police are examining footage of the event in the search for the suspected shooters, and have vowed to solve the case. No one is yet in custody.

There aren't perfect words to extend to people who survive trauma. I want to tell the people who were shot: I am sorry, and I am angry, this was done to you. I am glad you survived. I hope you are able to access all the care and support that you need. I hope that being victimized doesn't bankrupt you. I hope you are able to find justice and peace.

If you haven't heard about this shooting, you're not alone.

There are reasons for the comparative lack of coverage of the shooting in NOLA over the weekend—and they are all ugly.

For one, mass shootings have become so common in the US, that a mass shooting where no one dies at the scene barely even registers nationally. (Never mind the devastation that shooting injuries can cause, even if one survives. See: Gabby Giffords.)

For another, the victims were predominantly or all Black. And the shooters are presumed to be Black. And the race of victims of gun violence tends to determine how much privileged people (including and especially the media) care about any shooting incident, even when 19 people are shot.

Relatedly, this was a shooting [CN: image of injury at link] that happened in an urban center, where shootings are not infrequent, and are often associated with gang violence:

Mary Beth Romig, a spokeswoman for the FBI in New Orleans, told the Associated Press that federal investigators have no indication that the shooting was an act of terrorism. "It's strictly an act of street violence in New Orleans," she said.

That is a statement of fact, but it also functions as the granting of permission to not care, because of existent myths and narratives we have about race, about "black-on-black crime," about the criminality in urban centers, about what constitutes terrorism and how lives taken in terrorist acts are valued, about guns.

It functions as a granting of permission to engage apathy because we have decided that places regularly visited by gun violence—especially places with endemic poverty, especially communities of color—are unfixable. Because we have decided that the prevalence of gun violence is reason to abandon a place. We wring our hands over aberrant gun violence in "peaceful communities," and turn our backs on routine gun violence in "violent communities."

The more gun violence there is in a place, the less we collectively care.

That is not good enough. I can't say it any more plainly that that.