Is it really that surprising though? A good way of looking at it is if someone in your family dies. Your going to deeply affected by it because it is someone who is so close and connected to you, even if it just a grandparent who has died naturally and peacefully because of old age. But would you expect anyone outside your immediate friends and family to have the same feelings? They might feel some sympathy but to expect them to feel the same pain and sorrow would be foolish.
The same is true for however one defines their life. If community is really important to you than someone dying in yor neighborhood might have an impact on you. But maybe your neighbor, who doesnt really care that much about where he lives and just likes his house and his comfy little individual life, isnt going to be impacted at all. Does that make him a bad person because he doesnt share the same connection to his neighborhood that others might?
This same idea can be applied to whatever nation you live in, whatever race or culture you identify with, even whether you care more about people dying in car accidents rather than pedestrians being killed. Everybody divides and subdivides their life into neat little hierarchies and categories that define who and how and what they relate with.
Im no different. While Blixa may identify with a more classic definition of Canadian and have his own feelings about how feels when different people are killed, so do I. Mine are different. Truthfully, when tragedy strikes a pampered, upper class, pretty white girl, I could car less. But when a young black male is killed by gang violence, I actually do care. Not because I have connection with black culture per say, or because I idolize the thug life, but because I could care less about the upper class and care much more about the lower class, the marginalized, those who have been disadvantaged through no actions of there own.
Sure everyone should care equally about everyone in a perfect ideal world, offering the same love and compassion to any person no matter there race, religion, creed, nationality or whatever category you want to put them in. But, we are human, and we form bonds and connections with those we feel we have the most in common with. And its also true that most people, who are humans, who are, still animals, are going to be by nature more interested in their own survival than others. Its human nature.
