Shocked Squared

Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor, the Human Health Education and Research Foundation's senior vice president for Africa and senior New Voices fellow at the Aspen Institute, has an opinion piece on the NPR website today: "I'm shocked by the racist cartoons and travel bans sparked by omicron."

Firstly, one should always repeat "shocked." If it's good enough for Claude Rains' Captain Renault in Casablanca, it's good enough for anyone. Secondly, I'd like to formally propose that people stop using the word shocked to describe how they feel after events that should be perfectly predictable and expected. A newspaper in Spain published a cartoon showing the omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus as Black people, curly hair, gigantic lips and all? You don't say...

There's something worthwhile in hoping that people will routine act in a way that one understands to be the best they have to offer, or even the median. Being surprised or upset when they don't, however, is pointless. While I understand why Director-General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom tweeted that "It pains me that shows of racism like this still plague the challenges facing the world today," I don't understand what good it does. Surely the Director-General could have made the point that the cartoon was, at best, in poor taste, with less emotional language.

One of the things that my father taught me was that one of the side-effects of public displays of emotion at the actions of others demonstrates that one is not really in control of their emotions... the person acting is. And while there are times when this is a perfectly reasonable or expected (and sometimes even socially demanded) way to go about things, it's also become a go-to reaction for items that are fairly trivial.

Dr. Nsofor also takes aim at the travel bans that have been enacted by several nations in a vain attempt to keep the new SARS-CoV-2 variant outside of their borders. Unless a nation plans to completely close itself off from international travel, that horse has likely long left the barn. But what else does one expect from governments? While it's been said that the Congress of the United States only does two things well, ignore problems or overreact, they're far from the only government body for whom that is an apt description. Panic about SARS-CoV-2 had been the norm for nearly all of the past 24 months. Why would anyone expect that governments, especially those which have relied on fear to justify the restrictions and other headaches they've pushed upon their citizens, would suddenly show poise and thoughtfulness in the face of yet another unknown? There's always been more upside for false positives in the game of detecting "existential threats" than there has been for calmly taking the time to assess the situation, especially if that risks resulting in some short-term pain.

I've often been termed a nihilist or been described as "beaten down" for the habit of understanding that the world doesn't care what I think of it, so I may as well deal with it on its terms, but it's spared me a lot of headaches and stress. And when something or other isn't directed at me personally, there's almost always been a way to make the point that it was somehow sub-optimal without needing to engage in what would strike a lot of people as affected histrionics.

There is no group of people large enough to have entered the public consciousness that's also too small to have no jackasses in it. And the world press corps surely fits that description. Rather than playing whack-a-mole with a handful of depictions of people that are, frankly, little more than fear-mongering, why not focus on the people who are being the change that one wants to see in the world, and rewarding them for the service that they are doing for everyone? (Another nugget of wisdom from my father, by the way.) The governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada are unlikely to simply be shamed into reopening their borders by people wagging their fingers. Pointing out that the nations who haven't enacted such bans are doing better, however, just might change something.

If all it took to make people courageous and wise was to begrudge them their fears and foibles, we have solved all of the world's problems already. That alone should be enough to encourage people to hold up those who exemplify the better parts of humanity higher than they do those they are disappointed in.