One of my students gave me a magnet with the words “Don’t believe everything you think” last year and told me she thought of me as soon as she saw it. It was perfect. Not only because the message resonates so strongly with me but more importantly, that it resonated with the learning absorbed from our critical literacy dialogues. I felt like mindsets were being stretched, triggered by the ability to think about everything they saw and heard about in the real world; by detecting prejudice and biases.

Then we hear about what can be triggered by hate and closed mindsets. The massacre in Norway cannot be easily absorbed or understood. It is the grim reality of what hate looks and feels like.

Media outlets created an immediate profile once again as soon as the news broadcast. The horror was labeled as terrorism associated to a specific faith group. In a recent post about the Vancouver riots, I talk about this perception of human profiles being read by certain preconceived definitions. This Norwegian perpetrator’s profile went unread, resulting in the devastating loss of human lives.

Two recent articles elaborate on the association of preconceived images and ideas related to this event. Valarie Kaur’s critically acclaimed documentary film, Divided We Fall, inspired a national grassroots dialogue on hate crimes after 9/11. In Why Oslo is Our Call to Change, she challenges the quick conclusions made after the tragedy and reminds us that Oslo is everywhere.

“The connection shows us what Sikh and Muslim Americans have known for a long time: anti-Muslim speech fuels anti-Muslim violence.”

Gary Younge, in his article Europe’s Homegrown Terrorists shares a similar sentiment:

“Then came the fact that the terrorist was actually a white, Christian extremist and a neo-Nazi, Anders Breivik, raging against Islam and multiculturalism. Unlike Muslims in the wake of Islamist attacks, Christians weren’t called upon to insist upon their moderation. No one argued that white people had to get with the Enlightenment project. But the bombings—and the presumptions about who was responsible—suggest that the true threat to European democracy is not Islam or Muslims but, once again, fascism and racists.”

In Canada, The Calgary Herald urges Muslims to be vigilant in the wake of the Norwegian massacre. I am concerned for all people who fit the profiles that media create through biased journalism, those that have visible and invisible differences. There are too many individuals who DO believe everything they think as we have seen with the massacre in Norway. Evil, unfortunately, lurks everywhere.

Our vigilance as a society needs to focus on our collective strengths, in participating in conversation that celebrates diversity of thought and directing our energies towards social change and justice for all. Human-made disasters, like natural disasters, are not always predictable. Life is not predictable. Preconceived ideas, racial profiling and narrow perspectives directed towards anyone who looks or sounds different to us blurs our vision as global citizens. Don’t believe everything you think.

May the healing for the families begin.

Tags: bias, media literacy, Norway massacre, prejudice, racial profiling, stereotypes, Valarie Kaur

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 at 11:46 pm and is filed under Media Monday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.