By Breana Staten, Opinion Editor
On April 21, six days after the fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral, several locations in Sri Lanka were bombed and according to major media outlets, at least 250 people were killed.
However, Google trends show that “within 24 hours of both incidents, the Notre Dame fire recorded between five and nine times more search interest than the Sri Lanka attacks,” according to Meera Estrada with Global News. “Google Trends also showed that worldwide search interest was at least six times greater for the keywords ‘Notre Dame’ over ‘Sri Lanka’ during this past week.”
Clearly a greater number of people were more concerned with the fire at Notre Dame than they were about the Sri Lanka attacks where lives were lost and changed forever.
When I heard about the Notre Dame fire, I was perplexed as to why so many people were heartbroken by this. It seemed as if everyone was flooding social media with memory posts about connections and experiences regarding the Notre Dame Cathedral. When news broke of the Sri Lanka attacks, there were barely any posts shared and nowhere near as many donations, and I cannot say I was surprised.
Gabriele Kahlout, Al Jazeera’s data and SEO analyst, echoed this sentiment and furthered his statement concerning the Sri Lanka attacks and Notre Dame situation, claiming that the reason for this is due to the Notre Dame fire having a “closer to home appeal,” which garnered greater interest and therefore concern to more Western audiences.
While I understand the significance of Notre Dame with its beautiful historic architecture that houses a multitude of priceless pieces of art, it’s sad to think that there were more people concerned with an old building that could — and will — be rebuilt instead of an event where people died.
As a society, we have allowed ourselves to become easily detached from things that we believe don’t have any connection to us. This mindset can be seen in events that happen within the U.S. where hurting communities and groups of people are often ignored by those not directly impacted. Ten days prior to the Notre Dame fire, three historical black churches, each of them at least a century old, were burned down as a part of hate crime, according to Daniella Silva with NBC News.
One would imagine, since this happened within the United States, that people would be rushing to help these communities, yet this devastation was largely ignored. It wasn’t until influential leaders like Seth Meyers, Ben Shapiro and Hillary Clinton began posting on social media to inform people not to forget about the stateside fires that “more than $1.8 million in donations to rebuild three historically black churches” were collected, according to Silva.
By highlighting the struggling community, Americans were able to better connect themselves to this tragedy. But if we continue to view things differently “because they don’t relate to us,” we end up ignoring problems and, ultimately, ignoring people and their voices. Action only took place after social media influencers called people out for their disregard.
Similarly, another hate crime was committed in San Diego, California, on April 27 in a synagogue shooting where one person was killed and three were injured. We should react with the same gusto and passion for these lives as we did for Notre Dame and the three historical black churches (after a bit of nudging). According to Alexia Underwood of Vox, “hundreds of people attended a vigil at a community park near Chabad of Poway Synagogue to express their solidarity with the Jewish community,” yet this unfortunate circumstance has been addressed primarily by various members of the Jewish or surrounding community with a few public figures sprinkled in. Nevertheless, there doesn’t seem to be anyone outside of the central community expressing solidarity with a group suffering loss that cannot be restored.
I recognize that the burning of the Notre Dame Cathedral is an unfortunate catastrophe and that many people have personal connections to this building. However, when people are more heartbroken or concerned over a building than they are for innocent lives lost in a bombing, young black boys being shot by authority figures or children being put in cages, we need to check ourselves because a “closer to home” appeal should not determine how we value tragedies, inequalities and, most importantly, lost lives.
