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No, I Don’t Support Your Whataboutism About Notre-Dame. Here’s Why.
You can be concerned with both.
“Someone burned down a church in Opelousas,” my mom told me solemnly. I didn’t and couldn’t say anything. Black churches in the Southern US have burned down “mysteriously” for decades. But my parents lived in Opelousas for years so this felt a little personal. I’ve visited St. Landry Parish several times. And I also know — because my parents told me and I have seen the tell-tale signs passing by it — that not too far from Opelousas, there is a white supremacist enclave near Krotz Springs. So I suspected the worst.
“Another church burned down,” my mom said. She had the inside scoop. Opelousas is a small town and news spreads quickly. But disappointed by news like this before, I didn’t believe anything would come about.
That was a couple of weeks ago. When the sheriff’s department arrested a deputy’s son last week, I felt relieved that some justice finally came. And when I saw his mugshot, I cared to not know anything about him, lest those painful memories return. I don’t remember too many perpetrators caught in black church arsons, so I’ll take this one small victory. So many hate crimes go unsolved, that when one is solved, you feel some type of justice happened regardless of how small it is.