Get to know your neighbour

In a recent newspaper article, my attention was drawn to a story headlined “Drifter charged in death of champ [female] golfer.” The article, attributed to the Associated Press, described the tragic murder of an international student who was the reigning “Big 12” university golf champion. Her body was discovered on an Iowa golf course not long after she had been reported missing. Shortly thereafter, police arrested a “homeless” man and charged him with first degree murder. An acquaintance of the accused reported that, several days prior, he had said “I have an urge to rape and kill a woman.” The article goes on to say that this was the second fatal stabbing of a female student in Iowa in recent months, and then recounts the case of Mollie Tibbetts, a university student who vanished while jogging near the small town of Brooklyn, Iowa. The writers point out that the male charged with that murder was an “immigrant from Mexico.” Since then, there has been a great deal of controversy about his actual immigration status in the U.S. Unfortunately, both these cases present excellent examples of social profiling. This is a problem that arises frequently in the mainstream media, and, I suspect, just as often over morning coffee at Tim’s. I am not sure whether, most times, the perpetrators even realize that they are doing it. While I am not disputing the facts of these cases, as reported, I am very concerned that identifying a suspect “en passant” in a major crime case by racial or ethnic background [Mexican, Hispanic], social class [drifter, homeless], mental health [obviously mentally ill, implied]; citizenship status [immigrant]; contributes to the stereotyping of whole groups of people. While both these examples are from the United States, we, as Canadians, should not feel too smug. We practice our own version of ethnocentricity and have our own home-grown white supremacists, alt-right practitioners,” anti-fa” militants and religiously and racially-intolerant trolls. For the record, there is abundant evidence that undocumented immigrants/refugees are much less likely to commit serious crimes than their fellow citizens; that the mentally ill are no more likely to become violent than the rest of the so-called “normal” population; that homelessness, per se, does not increase the murder rate; and that minority religious or ethno-cultural groups [e.g. Hispanics, Muslims, blacks, Asians] are no more likely than Caucasians to break the law or to become a burden on or to scam our social welfare system. Unfortunately, our critical appraisal skills appear to be failing us and common sense isn’t nearly as common as it should be. On occasion, we are all guilty of selective hearing loss and are much more inclined to absorb, remember and repeat those ideas which tend to support our own particular point of view. This is known as “confirmation bias” and, as we continue to further restrict our information input, we inadvertently create our own personal knowledge bubbles. If much of what we think we know comes from selective sources such as Fox and Friends or Breitbart news, we will tend to see the world in a particular light, while if much of our information comes from MSNBC or CNN, the world will seem a much different place. Not necessarily better, just different. The prudent information consumer would do best to graze the breadth of the pasture, sampling opinion widely and digesting the products of such consumption contemplatively. Caveat emptor. Get to know your neighbours and talk to them. You might be surprised how much you have in common.