_Sarah Rubinstein is a freshman journalism major at MU. She is an opinion columnist who writes about politics and societal observations for The Maneater._
This past May marked a turning point for many Americans.
More Americans began to reflect inward on the systemic racism that the policing system was founded on, our country’s history of racism and our own internal racial biases.
Video footage of the murder of George Floyd particularly struck people with the disturbing issue of police brutality, even though it has been going on for centuries. Not only was the public aware of the event, they remembered his face, his name and his last words. People were shocked because they saw it as an isolated incident, rather than an ongoing problem that recently spiked in attention.
When discussing police brutality, it is easy to cite George Floyd as a well-known example of the problem. Yet, if we fail to continuously keep up with police brutality as an ongoing issue, we see things as episodic events.
There were 1,004 people who were shot and killed by the police in 2020, according to The Washington Post. Looking at just a statistic, it is difficult to understand the heaviness of an issue. We feel a sense of statistical numbness, where we mentally check out when the numbers begin to pile on. It is difficult to feel for the weight of an issue when it feels impossible to put the numbers into perspective.
Statistics fail to spur us into action because we cannot see the human in numbers. Professor Paul Slovic at the University of Oregon claims that we see statistics as “human beings with the tears dried off.” When the public does not feel for an issue, it holds back the need for politicians to push for policy to combat it.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have already been 49 mass shootings in the U.S. this year. While we are likely to see these numbers increase, the public has become so accustomed to gun violence that the anger and urgency appeared to be fading. In the final presidential debates gun control was absent from the debate topics, further instilling that if there is not a public desire to fight for something, it will leave the political conversation.
Similar to police brutality, the statistical numbness surrounding COVID-19 deaths and infections fails to put the seriousness of the pandemic into perspective. Everyone can remember the first time they heard of someone they know testing positive. It made the impact of the pandemic feel real. As the initial fear began to fade and people started to settle in with the pandemic as almost normal, the impact of the statistics did nothing to change behaviors.
The apparent desensitization to COVID-19 downplayed the impact it had on unemployment rates that only prolonged the struggle to pass the stimulus check bill in the House. As unemployment continued to hurt Americans, the only reassurance former President Trump could offer the people was to not “let it dominate your life,” when being out of a job can completely change someone’s life. As a president who has continuously failed to see the human behind the numbers, his detached leadership sheltered Americans from the dangerous state of the economy.
It is impossible for every single police brutality victim or COVID-19 victim to have an entire news feature about their life and the specifics of their case. Even though it may be easiest to connect with prominent stories like George Floyd, victims who have become sole statistics should not be ignored. It is unrealistic to ask the news media to focus coverage on characterizing every individual who suffered from a tragedy. If we want to start seeing statistics truthfully, it requires self-reflection and observation.
When we watch tragedy strike, the first thing we are likely to do is to convince ourselves that it could never happen to us. When we receive an MU Alert about a shooting, we convince ourselves it could never happen to us because we would never be downtown at night in an unsafe area. When we hear about someone dying from COVID-19, we convince ourselves that could never happen to us because college students most likely recover.
To look the other way and disconnect with statistics, even if we have no immediate connection to it, continues the cycle of desensitization of tragedies. No victim of a tragedy ever predicts that they will live forever on as a statistic, and it is our job to see the human in that. Otherwise, the continued ignorance of serious issues could have us all end up as statistics.
When encountering a statistic, eliminate the false belief that it has no weight on other’s lives. Even when numbers, such as COVID-19 deaths, get so large that we cannot picture a face to every number, we can recognize that this is a problem becoming so common that we are desensitized to it. That should set off an alarm that we need to continue to discuss and fight for solutions for these issues or the attention to the issues will disappear.
By bringing these statistics to life, we can demand action from our representatives and the news media. Keep watch of tragedies and personally connect with them. Once we humanize the numbers, we can work towards bringing them down.
The Maneater encourages all readers to commit to the fight against racial injustice and donate to the Black Career Women’s Network. “Black Career Women’s Network (BCWN) is a national career development organization dedicated to fostering the professional growth and success of Black women.”
https://bcwnetwork.com/donate/
_Edited by Sofi Zeman | szeman@themaneater.com_
