superodalisque
Well-Known Member
i often feel that people think they're doing young white males a favor by ignoring their bad behavior but are they really? what are we saying to them and about them when society makes it so easy for them to game the system and expects so little of them? why do we treat them like incapable cheats at best who can't possibly make it unless someone looks the other way. why don't we seem to truly want to hold them responsible for their actions? are we creating the other side of Ralph Ellison's invisible man where we sacrifice young white males right along with young black males to maintain a defunct cultural mythology and don't seem to even acknowledge that they even have the capacity to simply be a bad guy?
i found this great article. the writer is from a white middle class background. as african americans when we say this stuff we are poopooed and everything becomes about us and racism and an honest examination gets skirted again. i was hoping that by bringing in this thoughtful article from white writer we could honestly get at what is really happening with these spree shooters. after all if any other tremendously gruesome crime was being committed almost exclusively by one race/age group there would be intense examinations about why that was. but on the topic of spree shooting we aren't allowed to bring up race because it's never somehow the right time even though it its the practically exclusive domain of white males and escalating exponentially. maybe we really need to finally make it the right time. why do we keep ignoring, that while we concentrate on urban violence that the average criminal is white male and under 35 and that white people, for all their fear of the other, are overwhelmingly more likely to be victimized by their own kind?
The Unbearable Invisibility of White Masculinity: Innocence In the Age of White Male Mass Shootings
David J. Leonard
http://gawker.com/5973485/the-unbea...cence-in-the-age-of-white-male-mass-shootings
"So, naturally, we are supposed to forgive white males who commit mass murder because they feel as if they have lost their privilege? White America constructs victim narratives around itself to explain and rationalize its own failures' The kids who died in Newtown, and in other schools are victims, but the threat to them, to society, wasn't Adam Lanza or James Holmes.
Yet, we look elsewhere. We look for excuses and make moves to reposition whiteness as victim needing protection. We use moments of tragedy to reassert the value in whiteness and the importance in protecting white bodies. We work to ‘blame' something or someone other than Mr. Holmes, Mr. Lanza, Mr. Klebold, and countless others? With a narrative about" good kids" in hand and an insatiable need to ask, "Why?" and "How could he have done such a thing?" we continually imagine violence, barbarism, and terror elsewhere. White Americans like to think of this kind of violence as an anathema to who we are as a country and as a culture and are reluctant to think that someone like those all American kids, like our kids, like us, could be mass murdering monsters living in our midst. In reality, this kind of violence is in many ways a part of our violent history and culture. We have to accept that there is a "typical" face of mass murder in the United States - it is not the black kid killing people in gang shootings, the Mexican cartel member, or the "Muslim terrorist." It can be, often is, will probably remain the innocent, white, suburban boy next door.
I was the boy next door, schooled in America's pedagogy of racial stereotypes, fear, and racism. Dropping off my friend in East Los Angeles, or visiting another friend in Gardena, CA often resulted in family members and white friends telling me "to be safe." I recall one instance where I dropped my friend off, only to ask him to watch me to drive off to make sure I was safe. I wanted him to make sure that I was safe. Privilege, stereotypes and irrational fear were on full display. I fear, I profiled, and I lived within America's racial logic. Yet, the danger to white America, to the nation, then and now, was not the black or Latino gangster, or the Muslim terrorist, but the white man who is capable of unimaginable death and destruction, the white man, who we will go to all lengths to embrace as our own, who we will continually aid and abet with innocence.
i found this great article. the writer is from a white middle class background. as african americans when we say this stuff we are poopooed and everything becomes about us and racism and an honest examination gets skirted again. i was hoping that by bringing in this thoughtful article from white writer we could honestly get at what is really happening with these spree shooters. after all if any other tremendously gruesome crime was being committed almost exclusively by one race/age group there would be intense examinations about why that was. but on the topic of spree shooting we aren't allowed to bring up race because it's never somehow the right time even though it its the practically exclusive domain of white males and escalating exponentially. maybe we really need to finally make it the right time. why do we keep ignoring, that while we concentrate on urban violence that the average criminal is white male and under 35 and that white people, for all their fear of the other, are overwhelmingly more likely to be victimized by their own kind?
The Unbearable Invisibility of White Masculinity: Innocence In the Age of White Male Mass Shootings
David J. Leonard
http://gawker.com/5973485/the-unbea...cence-in-the-age-of-white-male-mass-shootings
"So, naturally, we are supposed to forgive white males who commit mass murder because they feel as if they have lost their privilege? White America constructs victim narratives around itself to explain and rationalize its own failures' The kids who died in Newtown, and in other schools are victims, but the threat to them, to society, wasn't Adam Lanza or James Holmes.
Yet, we look elsewhere. We look for excuses and make moves to reposition whiteness as victim needing protection. We use moments of tragedy to reassert the value in whiteness and the importance in protecting white bodies. We work to ‘blame' something or someone other than Mr. Holmes, Mr. Lanza, Mr. Klebold, and countless others? With a narrative about" good kids" in hand and an insatiable need to ask, "Why?" and "How could he have done such a thing?" we continually imagine violence, barbarism, and terror elsewhere. White Americans like to think of this kind of violence as an anathema to who we are as a country and as a culture and are reluctant to think that someone like those all American kids, like our kids, like us, could be mass murdering monsters living in our midst. In reality, this kind of violence is in many ways a part of our violent history and culture. We have to accept that there is a "typical" face of mass murder in the United States - it is not the black kid killing people in gang shootings, the Mexican cartel member, or the "Muslim terrorist." It can be, often is, will probably remain the innocent, white, suburban boy next door.
I was the boy next door, schooled in America's pedagogy of racial stereotypes, fear, and racism. Dropping off my friend in East Los Angeles, or visiting another friend in Gardena, CA often resulted in family members and white friends telling me "to be safe." I recall one instance where I dropped my friend off, only to ask him to watch me to drive off to make sure I was safe. I wanted him to make sure that I was safe. Privilege, stereotypes and irrational fear were on full display. I fear, I profiled, and I lived within America's racial logic. Yet, the danger to white America, to the nation, then and now, was not the black or Latino gangster, or the Muslim terrorist, but the white man who is capable of unimaginable death and destruction, the white man, who we will go to all lengths to embrace as our own, who we will continually aid and abet with innocence.
