Child’s murder is not about race

I have a very good friend named Helene, who I’ve known since we were in high school together at Merion Mercy. She’s a Registered Nurse as well as a dance therapist who, with her sister Jeannanne (another proud Mercy girl and nurse) have created a program called “Look Who’s Dancing!” That might sound familiar to you, since I’ve written about them in the past. This is a program that uses dance moves and music to improve the lives of people with developmental and learning disabilities, as well as the elderly. It’s a “mitzvah,” as my Jewish friends would say, a true blessing.

I tell you all of this by way of an introduction, because I want you to know the kind of person Helene is. There is not a hostile, mean bone in her body.

And this is why what happened to her, and to others like her, angers me. Then again, I am no longer surprised at the depths to which some people will sink in these fraught and tortured moments. Helene posted something on her Facebook page about honoring the life and tragic death of Cannon Hinnant, the little 5-year-old from North Carolina who was shot through the head by his next-door neighbor. I also posted about the death, and made the child’s picture my social media profile photo. We both did it to call attention to the loss of another innocent to senseless, ubiquitous violence.

But Helene was told that her posting smacked of racism. Why, you might ask? Because the killer of Cannon Hinnant, a white child, was a black former drug dealer and felon. Apparently, recognizing that this child was the victim of a felon who happened to be the same race as George Floyd was engaging in race baiting, even though race was barely mentioned in any of the posts about the child’s death.

Yes, there are some conservative outlets that have tried to make it about race, and that’s wrong. This is about the death of a child, one whose blood is the same color as the spilt blood of black and brown children in the inner cities.

But let’s take a closer look at what’s going on here. The people who came after Helene, and who have been coming after anyone who suggests that not enough attention has been paid to this baby’s massacre in broad daylight, don’t seem to like the fact that we are talking about a child who isn’t black or brown. There is the not-so-subtle suggestion that even focusing on the tragedy of his lost life is an attempt to deflect attention from the larger national conversation on racism and the “mattering” of Black lives, and the bigotry of Republicans. There is the sense that if we dare to mourn his passing with the same passion and fervor and anger that we should give to the death of any martyred human, we are disrespecting the memory of Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, and Ahmad Aubury, and all of the other names that we have heard and stories that we have absorbed over the past five or so months. It is the crazy, tone deaf premise that we cannot care about all of the senseless crimes committed against innocent people at the same time.

I do not think that Cannon Hinnant’s life was more important than that of any minority child’s. I do, however, think that we are making him “lesser than,” when we attack people who try and bring attention to his passing. The suggestion from the tolerant progressives that calling attention to the murder of a little boy riding his bike in front of his house is somehow racist shows just how brainwashed these people are. Their compassion is written on lawn signs, their furrowed brows and their carefully curated social media pages, but not on their hearts.

We are at a very dangerous place when people have to be afraid to mourn the death of a child because it might offend or trigger someone. I refuse to capitulate in that, and pander to the type of person who only has a limited amount of compassion, all of which was exhausted after the Floyd funeral.

I will be keeping Cannon’s image alive on my Facebook page, not as a challenge to a social justice movement and not as a way to disrespect George Floyd, but in defiance of those who think that only some lives matter.

And because I love Helene.