Opinion: Isn’t the World Mean Enough Already?

Many if not most Wichitans shuddered as news broke of the midair collision of American Airlines Flight 5342 with an Army Black Hawk helicopter on Jan. 29 – Kansas Day. More than likely in this place where six degrees of separation feel more like two degrees, we knew someone on that plane.

Reports hours later confirmed the worst. No survivors.

As shock morphed into grief, as search and rescue gave way to recovery, as fears turned to verification, suggestions that diversity programs had contributed to the disaster wafted from a White House news conference and from the state’s junior senator.

Why, during such profound national grief, would anyone suggest such a thing?

The world is mean enough already. Why are so many hellbent on making it meaner?

That question is coming from someone who hates the standard kumbaya moments following most public tragedies and the loathsome we’re-all-in-this-together platitudes that ignore obvious and intentional social stratifications.

But we now have beer-muscle influencers clamoring for get-tough measures while whining at the slightest inconveniences.

The socially permissive are enjoying the suffering of people believed to have voted for the candidate who’d hurt people, only to now find themselves hurting.

As satisfying as this may feel, they should choose to extend the empathy those folks were prepared to deny others.

The world is mean enough already.

Consider the changes wrought so far and the plight of the vulnerable: threats to Medicaid; food spoiling in ports while thousands starve; ending efforts to reunite children ripped away from undocumented parents.

It has felt like cruelty for cruelty’s sake.

Those DEI comments felt particularly cruel because I knew the family of someone on that D.C.-bound plane, Kiah Duggins.

Kiah’s father, Maurice, was my mother’s doctor. Kiah’s mom, Gwen, grew up in my childhood neighborhood, and her best friend was the older sister of my best friend. Realizing Kiah was on that plane felt so close and so personal.

They’re the sort of people upon which strong communities are built. Kind, caring people who selflessly serve their community with no expectation of a spotlight. People the least deserving of having their loss politicized.

Weeks before, I’d asked Dr. Duggins to speak at a Black Legislative Day event featuring a proclamation from Gov. Laura Kelly and presentations from community advocates.

After learning that Kiah was on that plane, I can remember wishing it was not so and then looking at my bookshelf, and there among family photos, I saw a picture of Kiah.

It was on the cover of a hardback book of photos I’d published for Kansas African American Museum donors from our annual Tribute to Trailblazers gala. There, smiling radiantly, a fist dug into her hip, and a vivid life of achievement ahead and behind her, I asked, Why must life be so cruel?

There’s little we can do about tragic circumstances.

Everything else we do is a choice.

Mark McCormick previously served as the editor of The Journal.

A version of this article appears in the Summer 2025 issue of The Journal, a publication of the Kansas Leadership Center. To learn more about KLC, visit http://kansasleadershipcenter.org. Order your copy of the magazine at the KLC Store or subscribe to the print edition.

This article first appeared on KLC Journal and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Previously Published on klcjournal.com with Creative Commons License

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