Not my state, not my issue - or is it?

One of our new US interns Alexandra Fox (Alex) started today, and has hit the ground running by writing this short opinion piece about her changing feeling about US politics as a UK visiting student. 

As a native of California who goes to school in New England, I often feel disassociated from the news that preoccupies the South.  I don’t share the culture that waves the Confederate Flag.  I hardly know anyone who owns a gun.  But that also doesn’t mean racism only exists in The South.  

I was in London waiting in line to get a coffee when I first heard of the racially motivated shootings in Charleston, South Carolina, through responses on Facebook.  While on my Smartphone I saw people posting numerous articles with the words ‘shooting’, ‘black’ and ‘white,’ and thought they were discussions about police brutality incidents, but when I read the words ‘church’ and ‘supremacist’ I realised something different had happened.

It was difficult to gauge the gravity of the situation back home through my Smartphone.  Not many US students talked about it here, because we were all unsure how to feel about the incident, but British people wanted to understand.  A London student made a comment about American gun control laws to provoke a response from me.  I felt stunned because ‘gun culture’ had never been ‘my’ culture, but the comment was directly intended to be towards all things American.  

The shootings affected me as an American, but I didn’t feel as if it was in my own backyard.  They were so far away in a part of my country that I’d never visited, yet somehow I represented all America to this Londoner.

A national tragedy like the Charleston massacre occuring while studying abroad is a strange experience, because it teaches me more about my own country and how others perceive it.  I can’t, and don’t want to, disassociate myself from that culture.  Nor can I dismiss a tragedy that occurred over 4,000 kilometres from my hometown and think that I am somehow not connected to it.  So I owned up to that Londoner that the tragedy was in my backyard. I could have chosen to ignore it or confront it, and I chose the latter.  

I believe that’s the battle that white Americans in every state face towards race issues…do we accept it together or just wave it off as ‘not my problem.’

Alexandra Fox