Why race matters with mass shootings
http://www.vox.com/2014/5/26/5750768/mass-shootings-on-campus-are-getting-more-common-and-more-deadlySo, by a fairly sensible definition of "campus mass shooting", they are in fact getting more common and more deadly. But it's not entirely clear what "campus mass shooting" means, so there's always some sort of question.
Here's a piece from several years ago (the guy is kind of an ass, if you go to the rest of his blog, but he makes an insightful point here):
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/09/another_school_shooting_sort_o.html
Before you answer, let me give you one single piece of information, that should be irrelevant, that turns out not to be. If I tell you that the shooting happened at Delaware State-- formerly, "State College for Colored Students"-- do you still think it was a case of a "Cho?" Why or why not?
I'm not saying he is or is not mentally ill. I'm asking, why does the racial makeup of the students-- shooter and victims-- change the bias? Do we think blacks can't be mentally ill? Or that blacks are naturally violent? Or do we think whites-- and especially Asians-- would only be violent if they were mentally ill?
When Cho went nuts-- no pun intended-- I could find almost no one, and absolutely no psychiatrist-- willing to consider the possibility that his behavior did not stem from a mental illness. If he had only been in treatment, none of this would ever have happened.
Now, compare the response to UCSB and the response to Myrtle Beach the other day. It's important to talk about race in this context because to some extent our society sees asian and non-Hispanic white violence as something fundamentally different from other groups' violence.
I mentioned upthread "campus mass shootings" are increasingly common, but that depends on what you mean by that. Those data from the 90s do not include a lot of violence in minority high schools in the 1990s because they don't fit our framework of what a "campus mass shooting" is, even though they also killed plenty of kids.
The same day as the Navy yard shooting, somebody shot up a park in Chicago full of poor black and Latino kids. I still don't know the shooter's name, or what weapon he used. I never heard his grudges or saw his youtube feed or read whatever rambling could be called a "manifesto". Now, the Navy Yard shooter turned out to be black, too, so I suppose the race of the victims matters even more than of the perpetrator -- nobody would shoot decent white people without some sort of "reason", be it terrorism or mental illness. Now, a park full of minority kids?...
I don't think being white or asian makes one more likely to engage in a mass shooting, but I think it definitely changes how people react if you do.
= new reply since forum marked as read
And, for that matter,
https://www.google.com/search?q="black+resentment" -> 6850 results, whereas
https://www.google.com/search?q="white+resentment" -> 15,800 results.
almost as if we expect the people with the least reason to be aggrieved to be more aggrieved. (And by "almost as if" I mean "of course we do".)
What was the last media-identified "black rage" episode? Colin Ferguson (no, not that one, the other one), on the subway? When was that, 1994 or something? (For that matter, I didn't see "angry black male" taken as a line by much of anyone, even conservatives, after the Navy Yard shooting -- I'm still trying to figure out what to make of that). It reminds me of the issues my Afghani friends have with the "first world problems" meme; it's said as if people in Afghanistan don't get bothered when the line at the tea stall is moving too slowly, or their blanket doesn't reach their feet, or whatever -- bigger problems don't actually make smaller ones disappear.
But back to your point, I think I have to question part of your post title:
when a black person commits a crime out of anger
I don't know that the societal filter views men of color as committing crimes "out of anger" (hence 6850 vs. 15,800). As far as I can tell, our societal filter isn't even interested in figuring out why a man of color commits a crime unless it can point to a white-empowering answer ("more social programs!" "fewer social programs!" "this is why we needed segregation!" "this is because of segregation!" etc.); all of those answers deny an individuality and agency to the actual person (man, generally) who committed the actual crime (even the conservative go-to "personal responsibility" is spoken with an implied "which he and his friends will never have"
.
I guess what I'm getting at is that a white or asian man who shoots a bunch of people is assumed by the media to have an inner life, motivation, and capacity for decision making, whereas that portrayal does not extend to a black or latino man who also shoots a lot of people.
