Which lives matter? [View all]

[pnwmom]

Why some lives count more than others.

I can’t do this article justice with snippets. It’s worth the time to read the whole thing.

From the National Catholic Reporter:

http://ncronline.org/news/peace-justice/which-lives-matter

In Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?, Berkeley professor Judith Butler asks why some deaths are a cause for public outrage and others are not. She argues that societies construct a "differential distribution of public grieving," and that some dead bodies are merely counted, while others "count."

Those that count are memorialized in public ceremonies, buried in well-tended graves, publicly commemorated on anniversaries. (Since 1906, Confederate graves have been honored with headstones paid for by the federal government; in the last decade alone, the Department of Veteran Affairs has spent $2 million for these headstones.)

SNIP

Butler's argument starts with the assertion that is obvious when stated, but obscured in daily life: Every person's life is precarious, and we are all subject to starvation, illness and early death.
But only some lives are seen as precarious, and are treated as such. The people in these groups are more likely to be embedded in systems of social caretaking, including access to healthy and abundant foods, medical plans, hospitals, adequate education, jobs, infrastructures that work. These are the lives that are protected, not threatened, by the police. And because their lives matter when they are alive, they are more likely to be grieved by society when they die.

According to Butler, a racist frame produces "iconic versions of populations" -- some of whom are "eminently grievable, and others whose loss is no loss, and who remain ungrievable."