What with dead birds falling from the skies of various cities across the globe and fishes and crabs floated ashore, to the murder of a liberal Pakistani governor who was a strong opponent of Pakistan's blasphemy law to the Tunisian coup that forces the dictatorial president to flee, 2011 sure made its entrance with a bang. And the loudest bang of it all was certainly none other than the mass shooting at a Safeway store in Tucson, Arizona, killing six American and wounding fourteen others including the congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords who was shot point-blank through the head!
It has been only two weeks into 2011 and it really hasn't given me the good starts I was hoping but looking through all the events that have been taking place so far, I have yet to get the worst and really, that is something to be thankful for.
Much has been said about the shooting from Barack Obama's powerful empowering speech during the memorial to Sarah Palin's 'blood libel' joke but one that I really like is Michelle Obama's 'Open Letter to Parents Following the Tragedy in Tucson'. Here's an excerpt of the part that I really like:
'In the days and weeks ahead, as we struggle with these issues ourselves, many of us will find that our children are struggling with them as well. The questions my daughters have asked are the same ones that many of your children will have – and they don’t lend themselves to easy answers. But they will provide an opportunity for us as parents to teach some valuable lessons – about the character of our country, about the values we hold dear, and about finding hope at a time when it seems far away.
We can teach our children that here in America, we embrace each other, and support each other, in times of crisis. And we can help them do that in their own small way – whether it’s by sending a letter, or saying a prayer, or just keeping the victims and their families in their thoughts.
We can teach them the value of tolerance – the practice of assuming the best, rather than the worst, about those around us. We can teach them to give others the benefit of the doubt, particularly those with whom they disagree.'
Having just finished my Public Health rotation, one thing that I learnt (if any) was that any attempts at changing whatever inequalities we have now for the future is by starting them at earlier age.
With regards to health inequalities, families with lower socio-economic status tend to live in a deprived area lack in facilities and amenities like schools, libraries, healthcare centres, sports centres and shopping malls, thus limiting them from getting access to resources (fresh food, exercise, health treatment, education) that could improve their health and life expectancy. This happens because they don't have enough money because they don't have good jobs due to no or low qualifications and more often than not, the children tend to not get the necessary basic education to help them move out of their poor living standard due to lack of access to schools or libraries and the children will simply end up like their parents. If anyone were to intervene, it should really start at making sure that every child gets equal form of education so that they would all start at pretty level playing field (it's impossible, yes, but we can all try to reduce the disparity) in their adulthood to get equal chance of acquiring competitive careers with the minimum income that will allow them to get equal access to healthy lifestyle.
The crux of all this shiz is that parents need to play their role and, to quote Michelle's letter, 'teach them the value of tolerance – the practice of assuming the best, rather than the worst, about those around us. We can teach them to give others the benefit of the doubt, particularly those with whom they disagree.'
The tragedy in Tucson was the result of a young man, so disturbed and so caught up in his own political beliefs, he failed to tolerate the congresswoman representing his state whose political belief was different from that of his, he chose to assasinate her.
While things have yet to go to such extreme in Malaysia, intolerance has always manifested deep in our society that, now and again, we would see its ugly head rearing, eager to start getting violent. Back in December last year, a man received death threats for admitting publicly that he was gay and he was okay with it in his attempt to support young, vulnerable and distraught LGBT teenagers and give comfort that things will eventually get better and that should never be an option. Yes, he was a Muslim and it was understandable that he was bound by the religious obligation he was born in but the idea that he should be killed for a choice he had made for himself was unacceptable. Religion and faith are not some sort of organisations in which a member should be punished for not following in the rules. Faith is personal and should only remain between the believer and the one he or she chooses to believe in and fellow believers can only advise if he or she chooses to deviate from the faith. To simply punish on the fear that his deviation would lead others to deviate as well would be barbaric. The man didn't publicly admit he was gay to encourage straight people to follow in his footsteps and change their sexuality because it's okay to do so. He did it to tell other gay youths to simply hang in there because their lives would eventually get better, which doesn't seem to be the case now because apparently that put a price on their heads!
In a competition of sports, you don't go around injuring or killing members from other teams to sabotage their chance of winning because they pose a threat to your own chance. You train and work hard within your own team to make sure that once the competition starts, your team are putting out the best effort and performance that will not be shaken by other teams' equally unshakeable effort. That is only fair and square.
And this brings us all back to teaching tolerance in our younger generations for things difference from what they, or what they're influenced to, believe in. Tolerance is not compromising. To tolerate people by choosing to understand their their different choices does not mean choosing to compromise the belief that we've chosen to hold on to. To accept that other people have different sexualities, either by nature or nurture, does not mean giving up your own sexuality to become like them. And just because people are different, that is no valid reason to shun them away to the point of depression and suicide for that is no better than buying a gun to shoot dead people whose belief are different from that of yours.
To finish, I'm leaving you guys with a video of Barack Obama's speech during the memorial service in Tucson:
You can read the full text here and this are some of the lines that I really like:
'These men and women remind us that heroism is found not only on the fields of battle. They remind us that heroism does not require special training or physical strength. Heroism is here, in the hearts of so many of our fellow citizens, all around us, just waiting to be summoned -– as it was on Saturday morning. Their actions, their selflessness poses a challenge to each of us. It raises a question of what, beyond prayers and expressions of concern, is required of us going forward.'
'But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized -– at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do -– it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.'
'As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let’s use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.'
'And I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.'
Differences do not spell bad!
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