This weekend 24 people were shot in New York within a 24-hour

span. Yet it amazes me that when I text and called my friends

asking if they heard about this huge wave of violence in one of the

world’s biggest cities, many people were completely unaware of this

even occurring.

This weekend 24 people were shot in New York within a 24-hour span. Yet it amazes me that when I text and called my friends asking if they heard about this huge wave of violence in one of the world’s biggest cities, many people were completely unaware of this even occurring.

It is always comical to see how unattached our generation is from news that actually impacts our lives. A wave of violence hits the country and no one knows about it. Why?

Let me be clear. It is pathetic that we dedicate ourselves to celebrity news more than we do real news. We pay more attention to album reviews than we do to violence that happens all around us.

Please spare me the lame excuses of, “all news is depressing,” “I’m too busy to keep up,” or “the news just doesn’t excite me.”

We use this as a weak and lame excuse to be lazy and fall short of our responsibilities as human beings. While countries all over the world are revolting and staying up to date about issues going on all around the world, our age group has become so blinded that we believe Beyonce’s pregnancy is “Breaking News!”

And while we are busy cheering and celebrating for her on our Twitter timelines, a pregnant 17-year-old Chicago native by the name of Charinez Jefferson, was shot four times and killed just for being on the wrong side of the neighborhood.

Following celebrity news is not a bad thing. We live in a country that gives us the luxury to do that. However, our lives should not revolve around these individuals.

Too many A&T students see the campus around them and that’s it. It is sad to say this, but I am willing to bet that most students on this campus are completely unaware that Greensboro has surpassed last year’s homicide totals already. I understand that may not be as “interesting” as reading about Madonna’s album being just as bad as her movie, but come on people.

People of color all over our country are dying due to senseless violence, yet we ignore everything that is going on around us. Our generation, and especially our race, constantly ignores networks such as CNN, while networks like VH1 seem to dominate our television sets everyday.

And while we are being distracted by garbage, violence runs rapid in the country. We pay more attention to the life stories of people like Kim Kardashian (a woman who holds absolutely NO value to 99% of this campus), than we do to the lives of young black men and women who were killed just a few months ago. Let’s not be so quick to forget that their stories are far more important to pay attention to. Their deaths were all based on he-said she-said gossip (something we all face everyday).

I think the time long ago for us to get more focused on what is really going on and what really matters. It’s about time we stop “watching the throne” and start watching the news!

Facebook and Twitter have shown me a lot about this generations true lack of knowledge. Lil Wayne’s VMA performance and album failure hit the Internet world and trended globally. Meanwhile, an Oakland man by the name of Jose Esparza was robbed, shot, and killed in front of his six-year-old son. Why didn’t I ever see his name on my timeline?

If I learned anything from the death of Torie Carpenter, a 22-year-old mother who was shot in her home in front of her two children back in 2006, it is that this generation has become so increasingly numb to real issues that we have began to ignore them all together.

People die from pointless acts of violence all over the country everyday, yet we never stop to ask, “what should I do to stop this?” One individual cannot solve the problem, however one can spark the solution.

So many lives could have been saved over these last few months if people, especially educated people, put forth an effort to at least care about what’s going on. And the physical deaths in this story are nothing compared to the mental death many of us have willingly accepted by not reading and watching the news.

The news may be depressing at times, but to purposely dedicate yourself to ignorance is more depressing. The time for us to get angry about what is happening in our world is well overdue. In the words of Tupac Shakur “It’s time we stop worrying, and get angry you know? But not angry and pick up a gun, but angry and open our minds.”

• Trumaine McCaskill,Opinion Editor