Stories from My Mixtape is a column written by staff writer Jenny Zhu, centered around a certain song chosen to be played as you read the post.

It’s 2 a.m. My mind is on the hefty task of starting the JRP, but my fingers are poised on the keyboard to write this post and my heart is in Paris.

If you didn’t know what happened in Paris, a group of Muslim extremists attacked at a rock concert among other public spaces, including streets and near a soccer stadium, resulting in approximately 150 dead and an atmosphere of fear and terror throughout the city.

Attacks occurred in these locations around the city. Source: openstreetmap.org

The fact that I know I’ll wake up tomorrow morning safe in my bed and see the smiling faces of my family, alive, almost feels like a crime to me, especially knowing the horrors gripping citizens just miles away in Paris. To see bloodshed and violence in streets, at concert halls and restaurants that you had felt safe in hours earlier is something I hope no one would ever have to experience.

I’m really astonished that many people are taking to social media not to console victims, but to blame French Muslims as the cause of the terrorist attacks, posting photos reading, “Never ever trust a dirty [expletive] Muslim.” This is not the answer. In wake of violence caused by extreme hate and prejudice, perpetuating those exact feelings, of hate and prejudice, is not the answer.

To face the issues that we need to face, we need to come together, not point fingers. We are often so quick to place the blame, but in doing so forget the people that are suffering right now.

Not being brave enough to spread love and courage and hope for these victims, but instead making hurtful generalizations targeting part of the already-vulnerable French population – that is prejudice, that is cowardliness, that is apathy. I hate violence, but more than that, I hate prejudice, cowardliness and apathy, the very things that enable violence like this to happen.

To those like me, who have the privilege of safety in this time, the Paris Attacks compel us to console victims in any way we can and to honor the fact that life is truly a privilege, not just in France, but everywhere around the world. I have done so by donating to Samaritan’s Purse, which provides relief for families fleeing Islamic militants in the Middle East. We should look on our own lives as La Vie en Rose (“a beautiful life”), and hope that those lost in the Paris Attacks have passed on to La Vie en Rose, as well.

Commentaries are the expressed opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect that of The Fourcast staff, its adviser or any member of the Hockaday community.