I was watching CNN the other day when I learned that John Travolta had suffered a personal loss. It seems his sixteen year old had a seizure and died in the bathroom. The loss of a child is something I think that no parent ever really gets over. The natural order tells us that our children will outlive us, and that they will be our living legacy. From the moment a child is born we spend our lives watching over them, nurturing them and protecting them. Life is finite, and for many, people children provide hope.
I watched as network after network aired updates to this story until I found myself asking, of all the children living on this planet, what made this child so important that his death requires grieving on a national level?
Doctors and acquaintances were interviewed in an effort to secure a connection with the viewing public. I realized that we are meant to weep for this child that we do not know. Jett Travolta is valuable, not for anything he has ever done, but because he is the child of a rich, successful white man.
The continual media coverage of his death as a singular loss to the western world speaks of the way we have allowed a hierarchy of persons to determine which deaths are mourned and which deaths are ignored.
Had his name been Shamar we would not have heard of his passing.
Had his skin been brown, red, or yellow, we would not know his name. Had he grown up in Chinatown, or on a reservation, he would have been deemed part of the surplus population. When underprivileged children die it is considered a relief because then it is one less person to consume the earth’s valuable resources.
We are facing major problems in the oil indistry, the malls in the urban centers are empty, and the homeless rate is rising along with the rate of burglaries. In times of economic downturn it is the poor that are most affected. The invisible underclass that we march by daily on our way to earn a living, know that they have long since been forgotten.
We think, “go out and get a job,” but there are little subsistence-level jobs to be found. We don’t think that behind the man or woman begging for money there might be a child at home hungry and forlorn.
Daily, the government is attempting to claw back the reproductive freedom of women with no thought to the children that already exist. Not every child will be born with the last name Travolta. Not every child will have the shield of whiteness and class privilege to protect them from the evils of this world.
We have broken our social contract with the children that we bring into this world. We offer them a legacy of a planet that is ill and dying. We are bequeathing them a society that is so concerned with constructed values that we have lost sight of how precious life is.
We whisper little clichés, attend fundraisers, and speak of a better tomorrow, but we are not truly committed to a change. The hierarchy remains like an immovable obelisk within our midst, reminding us that only certain bodies matter.
Is Jett Travolta any more important than the Palestinian children whose school was bombed by Israel yesterday? Is he more valuable than the children that will walk miles to avoid becoming child soldiers? Does his death move your heart more than the child who is dying of a perfectly treatable disease? What is real tragedy in this world, and who decides when we must feel pain?
All children are not created equal. No matter the lies we tell ourselves about how much we value the innocence of childhood, we turn our backs on the death rattle of infants because their lives are inconvenient to either our geo-political objectives, or our desire to maintain racial hegemony. What counts is money and power, and children have neither. A child’s worth is determined by the womb that bore them and not the potential that they might offer the world.
Have we already slaughtered countless philosophers, scientists, doctors, artists and inventors simply because we refuse to see the potential of all children? Whose tears fall on the small nameless graves but the mothers’? As the earth swallows our unwanted little ones, I cannot help but wonder if it silently embraces the little corpses with pity in death, because we refused to do so in life.
As the media continues its onslaught commentary on the Travolta tragedy, I cannot help but wonder how many children of color have gone missing in this time period and why we do not know their names? How many children have died today as soldiers fighting a war they cannot possibly understand? Finally, how many children will weep bitter tears today because the adults who claim to want a better world fail to make all children a priority?
It is not enough to look at a world vision commercial and feel momentary sadness. The distended bellies and the salty tears will not disappear because you took a moment to shake your head and perhaps donate five dollars to the cause.
As much as I feel for the Travolta family in their time of ultimate sorrow, I know that I am only aware of the name Jett Travolta because he was a child of privilege. Perhaps instead of weeping for those who have so much to begin with, we need to cry for those that we have forgotten. From the barrios, to the reserves, to the ghettos, to the slums, to the jungles somewhere on this earth – a child is in agony. Will we ever begin to heal the pain that we have brought upon the innocence of this world?
When my daughter was killed in a accident at the age of 15 i screamed to God “what did I do to cause this to happen!” I could not stop screaming.
I knew I needed answers. I have written my book on the search, and the answers I found.
I also found my daughters spirit. Grief is so hard but letting go is impossible until you find some form of understanding.
Please visit my website and read about my book. http://www.aheavenonearth.com The book is Heaven On Earth by Judy Fisher
From the anti-choicers, one often hears the argument, “what if he [it’s usually a he] discovers the cure for cancer?” “What if he’s the next Mozart?” One hears this about embryos and fetuses, usually the embryos and fetuses of white American women. They don’t bother thinking this about the already-living children of black and brown women in other parts of the world. White men will say that all the talent the world has produced in the arts and sciences has come from white American and European men (and a few token women), and will never think that in the absence of the colonialism which they created, our artistic and scientific heritage on this planet could have been far more diverse. Nor do they recognize the artistic voices who did survive colonialism, who did still manage to create.
And you never hear them saying, “hey, let’s improve the lives of these children, not by forcing them to convert to Christianity or letting Madonna adopt them, but by building schools, sending books, legitimately caring about them so they can be the ones to rebuild their countries, not necessarily in an American way, but in their way.” People don’t say this because they’ve latched on to the people of the Global South as easily exploitable labor. Some children die, and some live to become workers in substandard factories for meager wages.
John Travolta is a Scientologist. He raised Jett within Scientology. Jett had been diagnosed with a severe condition earlier in his life, but was denied medical treatment because of Scientology’s views on the use of pharmaceuticals. It is very unusual for teenagers to die from seizures. There is a very strong possibility that Jett’s death could have been easily prevented if he had received the proper treatment. Scientology has a record of viscously going after critics going back half of a century.
That is why the story is being covered the way it is. This is another preventable death and the press can’t directly investigate the cause.
We are coming up on the first anniversary of Project Chanology. The idea that a blogger would have no knowledge of this is almost impossible to imagine. I know in your would everything comes down to evil rich white people, but believe me there are other things happening on this planet. Google Lisa McPherson, Paulette Cooper, Operation Snow White, or Dead Agenting if you want to learn what this story is really about.
I agree with you. The United States voted against the Human Rights Council of the United Nations proposal that children of the world have a ‘right to food’. The US was the only country to do so. There were no abstentions. No absences. The US voted that the 6 million children who die each year from hunger and hunger-related illnesses do not have a right to food.
Although Obama has such a huge load on his shoulders, I am hopeful that the fact that he is a person of color, and his already-shown sensibilities will lead people in a different direction than the one we have been on – toward a sense of community rather than entitlement. I am hopeful – but also pessimistic.
Thank you for your eloquent thoughts on this.
And we know that in YOUR world that no one should dare mention the racist practices of the mainstream media because YOUR issues are much more important.
you speak such truth. thank you.
Richard Behar, Paulette Cooper, Russell Miller and countless other have done exhaustive work documenting, publicizing and fighting for the victims of Scientology. The vast majority of the victims are poor, disenfranchised, female or people of color. The reason for this is simple, they have the fewest safety nets in society. The reason we are pushing this story is that because of John Travolta’s celebrity people will pay attention, when otherwise no one cares. The more sunlight shines on this sort of thing the harder it will be for groups like Scientology to retain any claim of legitimacy.
There is a huge amount of sexism and racism in this world; however all types of evil should be opposed.
As for the MSM…Check out the Fox “News” story on the Scientology protests. You should be able to find a copy on You Tube. By reducing everything into slanted 5 second clips it become impossible for information to disseminate through 24 hour news networks. That is why blogs are so important and that is why everyone needs to read up on this before tossing it into a pigeon hole.
Angel H, why did you instantly assume I was the enemy?
Because you’re a condescending ass:
I know in your would everything comes down to evil rich white people, but believe me there are other things happening on this planet.
Steven Eubanks:
Whatever you have against Scientology has nothing to do with this post. Stop trying to derail a conversation on racism with the silencing tactic that we should concerned about something “more important”.
Renee posted “Its’ a Post Racial and Post Feminist World” on January 9th. The following is a quote from that post.
“I continually return to privilege on this blog because I believe that it is the heart of everything that is wrong with this world. It is our desire to maintain unearned privilege that leads to the dehumanization of so many and the destruction of our planet.”
She has made similar statements on several occasions.
If this is all you ever look at a lot of really nasty things will slip past you. The drives and forces pushing society aren’t like a single continuous gust of wind. The world is more like the Gordian Knot. Every string is connected to every other string. Every time you pull a string every string it touches is pulled in turn. The world is a messy place.
If she had written this post about the Natalie Holloway story or any other example of “Missing white woman syndrome” I would agree with her completely. In this case I think she is reducing a battle of decades into a sound bite that fits her politics.
As for me being a condescending ass…well, you are absolutely correct. When “people like me” read what I write, they agree with me. When I write something for a broader audience I commonly piss people off. I think that is ONE of the reasons people unfairly attack Renee so often. There is no real point to blogging if you can’t disseminate information in a meaningful way. Thank you for calling me on that. I won’t make that error again. I think the overall conversation would have been much better if I had not thought that sentence.
Thank you for that.
Here’s the thing: I do agree that Travolta’s celebrity and his religion has something to do with the way this is being covered by the media. However, discounted the racial aspect of this does a disservice to the Tamika Houstons and the Judiliana Lawrences out there.