Every year, terrible crises cause enormous suffering, most of which is personally tragic and only affects those directly affected and their close relatives.
But in a small minority of cases, they have become politically notorious and have become publicly tragic.
Social tragedies can be natural disasters, school shootings, terrorist attacks, economic crises, etc. More recently, sexual assaults (mainly against women) by powerful executives and men have emerged as social tragedies, as has police violence against African-Americans, sowing political unrest across the United States.
Even the COVID-19 pandemic, seemingly a natural disaster, quickly turned into a social tragedy as the death toll, widespread mismanagement, distrust and blame galvanized people on both the political left and right.
Such events represent a shift in how tragic situations are represented and responded to in the United States and abroad. Public tragedies are heartbreaking events that attract widespread public attention. They are accompanied by stylized public expressions of shock, outrage, social condemnation, victim claims, protest, and mourning.
In my book After Tragedy, I explore the recent rise of public tragedies as a unique kind of political crisis that is having far-reaching positive and negative effects on social and political relations in the 21st century. It was not my aim to assess the veracity of the claims made in public tragedies. Rather, my goal was to use comparison to gain a deeper understanding of why some of these events exert such a powerful influence while objectively similar traumas do not.
One of the questions I sought to answer is why public tragedies contribute to the growing political polarization and sectarian nature of political rhetoric today.
The old way: “God, fate, bad luck”
The short answer is that it has changed the public’s understanding of tragic events.
Even in the 20th century, tragedies were often explained differently than they are today. Explanations often referred to forces such as God, fate, bad luck, innocent accidents, or, following the American liberal political tradition, personal responsibility. Causal explanations typically took this form, even when the suffering was extreme and known to have been caused or exacerbated by the actions or inactions of others.
The Johnstown Flood of 1889 in Pennsylvania occurred when a dam failed, burying more than 2,200 people and much of the city. The wealthy South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club built the dam to create a private lake. Although poor construction and maintenance caused the dam to fail, neither the club nor its wealthy members were held responsible. In the most famous lawsuit brought against the club, a final verdict attributed the tragic deaths and destruction to acts of God.
Today, this explanation would be indefensible.
A new path: “Government, Industry, Culture”
In the aftermath of a tragedy, news coverage has become focused on assigning blame and on social condemnation, placing the blame on social institutions such as government, industry, civil society, and even American culture.
Social blame attributes the harm to social forces, rather than to an individual or to God, and public tragedies involve political conflict because some group or aspect of society is blamed.
Another reason why public tragedies have become so politically significant is the changing mindset of modern Americans.
Polls have found that many Americans feel fearful and deeply vulnerable to situations beyond their control.
This mindset evokes sympathy for the victims of tragic circumstances, especially when political elites, the media, and social activists portray the harm they have suffered as a reflection of political failure and an unfair society. Today, political interest groups on both the left and the right routinely use victim claims to gain support and advantage.
The murder of George Floyd: a public tragedy
Take the story of George Floyd, who was killed in 2020 by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
Floyd’s killing sparked outrage across the nation, first through the video circulating on social media and then through sustained news coverage. News and social media coverage of Floyd’s death emphasized his innocence: as a Black man, he had suffered an unjust death at the hands of police.
The portrayal was unusual at the time: Standard reporting on such killings often focused on implied personal responsibility — resisting arrest, past reckless behavior or the victim’s criminal history — factors that were not emphasized in reporting on Floyd’s death.
The report also did not suggest that Floyd’s death was an integral part of police efforts to combat crime — a common feature of news reporting — nor did it highlight Chauvin as a bad cop, which would imply that he was solely responsible for Floyd’s killing.
Instead, initial reports linked Floyd’s killing to police violence across the country and suggested it was common police behavior.
Thus, Floyd’s murder was quickly labeled “police-blamed,” garnering significant public sympathy and notoriety, as well as political significance. The case became a social tragedy, highlighting the set of social circumstances surrounding his death in a way that has rarely been seen in police killings of black men.
“Good people have fallen.”
In the past, Americans might have attributed Floyd’s killing to fate, bad luck, an accident or even his personal responsibility, which might have dampened public outrage.
But these kinds of explanations are no longer as credible as they once were. Instead, the heartbreaking stories that characterize public tragedies follow a formula that I call “trauma scripts”: stylized tropes that exploit Americans’ fears and vulnerabilities, eliciting emotional responses and moral panics.
The script seeks to blame the actions and inactions of “society” on innocent victims who have been harmed by unpredictable, uncontrollable and unjust circumstances.
In this story, the public tragedy conveys a moral conflict in which good people are corrupted by an evil society. This tragic conflict is external and social, rather than internal and personal. It is a scenario in which bad things happen to good people who have no choice.
Thus, public perceptions of trauma and loss and their underlying causes have changed over time.
In earlier times, Americans often justified hardship because it reflected the sacrifices necessary to succeed. Today, the change in sentiment reflects a change in perspective: Americans now focus on the unjust hardships that society creates. This reflects a cultural shift from a progress-centered worldview to a risk-centered worldview.
Victimhood as a political identity
As Americans become more aware of risk, they increasingly see risk as a reflection of political choices.
Whether the issue is climate change, energy sources, guns, sexual harassment, discrimination, policing, abortion, or even freedom of speech, these are currently understood as involving decisions about risks that benefit some people at the expense of others.
Politically, these have become zero-sum conflicts, leading to political polarization among Americans and social distrust in American institutions.
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that two-thirds of Americans believe other Americans have little or no trust in their government or other citizens, and Gallup also found that Americans’ trust in government and other major social institutions has fallen to historic lows.
Growing distrust among Americans and perceptions of an unfair government also intensify political competition. Americans increasingly blame their political opponents for their hardships and sympathize only with those who share their beliefs. This shift also fosters sympathy for claims of social victimization and promotes victimhood as a political identity.
These conditions have created a proliferation of public tragedies that polarize rather than unify political events.
Thomas Beamish is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis.
This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.
