‘This Isn’t Just a Black Story. This Is an American Story.’

Carlos Javier Ortiz, director, cinematographer, and documentary photographer, recently spoke with Boston University School of Public Health (SPH) students and Pulitzer fellows Lauryn Claassen and Madeline Bishop as part of a joint project with the College of Communication highlighting gun violence in the United States.

“We need to look at how the narrative is dictated,” Ortiz says. Referring to when a mass shooting makes the news, “the way I see it dictated is, ‘This is a tragedy, this person is crazy, responsible gun owners don’t do this, somehow this person got their hands on a gun and shot someone.’” But in historically marginalized communities, “We hear about black-on-black crime and how as a community, brown and black people are killing each other. When this happens in the suburbs, it’s not seen as white-on-white crime.”