'Everyone sees the difference': Race, sexual orientation and FL's responses to Parkland and Pulse

[DonViejo]

'Everyone sees the difference': Race, sexual orientation and Florida's responses to Parkland and Pulse

By MARC CAPUTO 03/05/2018 05:06 AM EST

TALLAHASSEE — A mass-shooter murders 49 people in Orlando in 2016, and Florida lawmakers do nothing.

Another man with a gun murders 17 more people outside Fort Lauderdale in 2018 — but this time, protests erupt and Florida Republicans, for the first time in modern memory, propose limited gun control measures.

Many lawmakers — particularly those who represent gay and minority communities — say Tallahassee’s disparate responses to the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando aren’t coincidental, and speak to the intersection of race, privilege, sexual orientation and the priorities of the GOP-led Legislature in the nation's third-largest state.

Put simply: The Parkland high school students hailed from a heavily white and affluent community. The Pulse victims didn’t.

“The majority of the Pulse victims, the 49 people who lost their lives at Pulse, they were mostly LGBTQ people of color. Didn’t their lives matter? Why wasn’t the debate about gun safety important enough then?” asked state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat from Orlando and gay-rights advocate. Smith says he "lost constituents in the Pulse nightclub shooting. I lost a friend. Some of my closest friends survived that shooting after multiple gunshot wounds that they sustained."

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https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2018/03/05/everyone-sees-the-difference-race-sexual-orientation-and-floridas-responses-to-parkland-and-pulse-291897

[Va Lefty]

1. Very similar in difference to responses of Hurricane Harvey and Maria

What could be the reason?

[Blue_Adept]

2. That's a factor but not the complete picture

Look at the survivor aspect of it, similar to Sandy Hook, in that the survivors in this one are coming out and advocating in a big and public way right from the start.

Pulse didn't have that happen because most adults are conditioned to just recover and withdraw

Sandy Hook couldn't because the kids obviously couldn't and the parents were marginalized as just full of grief.

It doesn't help in the slightest to set people against each other in this way.

[Hav]

3. I agree

It's dangerous and not helpful if we pit groups against each other, especially those with potentially similar aims. Sometimes an event has a more lasting impact on society, sometimes a group has more luck getting their message across. There may be different reasons for that. Race can be an issue but there were enough school shootings before with insufficient actions taken.
The current success of the extraordinary students shouldn't be held against them or against the growing number of people who think it's time to change something. Those that care now and want to achieve something shouldn't be shamed and indirectly be called homophobes or racists for not being as engaged for a similar movement before.

[Blue_Adept]

4. What's been fascinating about this event is how the kids have managed to grab the microphone

You didn't see that with any survivors of other events, partially because they don't use social media in quite the same way, have jobs, etc. A lot of different pressures plus just the withdrawal kind of mentality many go into after something like that.

These kids have grown up in a sharing environment and expressing themselves. They're putting it all out there and I don't want to see that diminished by saying that the media is favoring white kids over gay adults or something along race lines.

[dreamland]

5. Because they are neither children nor adults

These Parkland students are kids who grew up using social media, they've just expanded their platform into mainstream media. The kids don't have to worry about their positions in life so they can speak out without fear of retaliation like a losing one's job. The Sandy Hook kids were just children, who again their voice is through their parents. These high school kids are the perfect age to speak out with little repercussions and lots of opportunities to define who they are.

[rainin]

6. The difference is only that the kids put themselves in front of TV cameras.

They organized on social media. They organized a town hall. None of the adult victims did that.

It helps that the kids don't have families to support, they don't fear the loss of their jobs if they upset the apple cart.

[uponit7771]

7. +1, the kids were out of school for 2 weeks and had no jobs to lose. Good point

[genxlib]

8. What exactly has the Florida Government done

The only things I am aware of is consideration of an age restriction on AR purchases and arming teachers.

Both of those things related to the circumstances of Parkland that were not true of the Pulse shooting.

There is no doubt that more should have been done after every shooting. What about country music fans in Vegas or church goers in Texas. They all deserved to be the episode that caused everything to change.

Every time, the common denominators of why things didn't change were gun culture and the NRA. Trying to parse out ethnic and gender orientation effects on the reaction just does not seem helpful.

I am just happy we finally have the boat in the water. Can we please just all row in the same direction?