Through the texts we have analyzed this semester, we have made numerous journeys across borders of race, sexuality, nationality, and more. As we cross these borders, we are attempting to understand people and experiences that may not be like our own. In doing so, we are sensitizing ourselves to situations that may be racist or homophobic or sexist or generally malicious. We no longer need to identify with the problem to be able to identify it. (Additionally, the word “woke” is term that has recently gained popularity; however, is the general public attempting to become “woke” for the purpose of understanding and empathizing with others, or is it to ultimately gain public favor and respect?) Despite these endeavors to sensitize ourselves, there are aspects of American society that we have become desensitized to, namely, mass shootings.

As we journey across these borders between people so that we may empathize with experiences we may not have had ourselves, we are simultaneously becoming desensitized to mass shootings, and we have consciously accepted that as an unchangeable fact. We know that the event is tragic, we feel sympathy towards the families and friends of the victims, we see that America is getting increasingly violent by the day, but ultimately, we are able to shrug it off and say, “It’s a tragic thing that happened, but in a week, we’ll forget about it.” And we do. We did.

On November 7^th, 2018, there was a mass shooting at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, California. Thirteen people died, including the gunman. It was college night; many of the people who died were still in their twenties, one victim being as young as 18. In all honesty, I probably wouldn’t even be writing this post if it were any other shooting, but to me, it’s not (even though in actuality, it really is). I’m from Thousand Oaks, California, and I didn’t realize how desensitized I had become until it took a shooting in my own hometown for me to cry again.

I found out on Thursday, the day after the shooting. Finding out about the shooting was like falling belly down into a body of water twenty feet below. The cold water shocked me. The impact nearly killed me. The current tumbled me around and I couldn’t tell which direction led to the surface. Twenty minutes after finding out about this news, I had to go to class. Class was class. Normal. Relatively uneventful, but in my own mind, I was still being strangled by the current, rereading the headings printed on my brain, trying not to break down into tears, praying to God that when they released the names of the victims, I wouldn’t recognize a single one of them.

“Did you know anyone in the shooting?” People asked this after hearing the connection I have with Thousand Oaks. It’s a difficult question to address because my answer to this question is both yes and no. Although I didn’t know any of the victims personally, I was still connected to them, still connected to the shooting. I knew people who were there, inside the bar and outside of the building. They were people from my graduating class, people from the neighboring high schools, people from my church, people who go to the college down the street that my friends go to. The victims were people from my community.

I did not personally know the victims, but our lives were very much, and unknowingly, intertwined. We all knew Thousand Oaks as home, as our own little city in sunny Southern California that no one outside of the county knew about. Now everybody knows about it—or at least they did for that one week. Now the all names are fading away.

Best friends or absolute strangers, why must there a reason to justify the grief over these lives lost? Can’t it be simply because they were people? Perhaps I didn’t cry about the other shootings because I wasn’t as personally connected to those victims, because I couldn’t imagine myself or my friends in the others shootings as easily as I could with the Thousand Oaks shooting. If I were to have cried over this shooting simply because the victims were human and nothing more related me to them, then the other shootings should have also left me with sleepless nights. But they didn’t.

It is because I was desensitized to the other shootings. The OED defines “desensitize” as “to free (someone) from a neurosis or complex.” (“Neurosis” as defined by the OED is “anxiety or malaise experienced by an individual, group, nation, etc.”). Desensitization frees us from the ball and chain of grief, allowing us to continue on in life. It allows us to remove ourselves from the situation and to not be able to see ourselves within every victim of a shooting. It allows us to hear about shootings and still be able to eat our next meal. It allows us to hear about the 307 shootings that have happened this past year and not lose at least a day to grief for every single one of them.

We talk about sensitive subjects not to become desensitized to the issue but to become aware of it. Race. Sexuality. Immigration. Citizenship. We talk about these things so that we can point out flaws in the mindset of our society that hold us back; similarly, we should talk about these shootings that have become so distinctively American. Even if it circulates in the news for only a week (or shorter—the Thousand Oaks shooting was on the cover of The New York Times for only one day before devastating fires took the lead), give it that week to discuss the issue. We will continue to be desensitized towards violence—it’s the only thing that allows us to remain levelheaded in the midst of these tragedies—but that doesn’t mean that desensitization should inhibit our ability to discuss and be empathetic towards the issue at hand.

-Tatiana Shepherd