WHITE MALE
The last thing I do before I go sleep is watching animal videos. Usually, the first I do when I wake up is also watch animal videos. I am obsessed with animal compassion and see good in people.
When bad things happens, I do completely blind. I would say I have my ears and my eyes crossed, then I can uncrossed them only when I am ready to read anything about it. I don't even watch TV shows like Narcos, Breaking Bad or Dexter.
Although I am extremely thankful for this class, and everything we learned and how much this opened my mind. This week blog, I don't feel comfortable on being anything but my bubble self. I just spent hours go over all the reading material, and of course, extending this until I have 45 tabs on my window. There is so much to say. I got very intrigued about the whole profiling of shooters. This is bad, and the fact they only describe the shooter as "Lone Wolf" is just... wtf?! I actually follow Shaun King on Facebook. He is one of the few pages I follow that don't share animal videos, baby videos, or soccer video. I read his article about white privilege right after he post. My first thought was connecting everything we were reading learning in class towards his writing. I believe the quote I keep thinking about is from Delpit "A white applicant who exhibits problems is an individual with problems. A person of color who exhibits problems immediately becomes a representative of her cultural group" (pg. 38).
When bad things happens, I do completely blind. I would say I have my ears and my eyes crossed, then I can uncrossed them only when I am ready to read anything about it. I don't even watch TV shows like Narcos, Breaking Bad or Dexter.
Although I am extremely thankful for this class, and everything we learned and how much this opened my mind. This week blog, I don't feel comfortable on being anything but my bubble self. I just spent hours go over all the reading material, and of course, extending this until I have 45 tabs on my window. There is so much to say. I got very intrigued about the whole profiling of shooters. This is bad, and the fact they only describe the shooter as "Lone Wolf" is just... wtf?! I actually follow Shaun King on Facebook. He is one of the few pages I follow that don't share animal videos, baby videos, or soccer video. I read his article about white privilege right after he post. My first thought was connecting everything we were reading learning in class towards his writing. I believe the quote I keep thinking about is from Delpit "A white applicant who exhibits problems is an individual with problems. A person of color who exhibits problems immediately becomes a representative of her cultural group" (pg. 38).
White Male
I decided to look over all the mass shooting and see the faces of the shooters (Yes, I did that to myself, I got out of my rainbow bubble). Not even the whiteness of the murder bothered me the most, by the face they were mainly males. I was looking in this website called Statistica, and this came up about "Numbers of mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and October 2017, by shooter's gender".
They also have one "by shooter's race and ethnicity".
Too add, Newsweek shared something about white men have committed more mass shooting than any other group, and said "In the U.S., 98 percent of mass shooting and 90 percent of all murders are committed by men".
yep, I am going to have nightmares tonight.
I hope Dr. Bogad pays for my therapy that I am going to start next week.
I kept reading about shooters being mainly white and mainly men. I ended up finding so many things. Then I realized, wait hold on! If this is obvious and it keep happening, what exactly was the word in the street last time there was a mass shooting? or the last 4 times? Did people also kind of realize that there is a problem on how media profile the shooter? Did people realize that is mainly man? Did people make this connections of white privilege? I wasn't taking this class, so I was probably inside my bubble last time there was a mass shooting, avoiding to think how scared I was to live here. But for Americans, especially from my generation who grew up in the peak of mass shooting, did people realize there is a trend? Did people complain how different the media approach white people violence comparing to black people or muslim?!?! what is going to happen next? What is going to change?! How did the president approach it? Or wait? there was a protest for "black lives matter" couple weeks ago?
Oh.. people are not talking about it anymore?
Oh... people will just stop talking about this, right? Until the next shooting, until the next white supremacist non sense protest, until more people die, or until someone peacefully take a knee.
Thank you for bringing up that quote about Delpit. If that doesn't fit perfectly into this weeks discussions, nothing will.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think the research and images you included in your blog really help show the reality that these mass shooters are mainly men and mainly white. Why is this still happening? Why are these men not being represented in the media the same way a shooter would be if they were non-white. That graphs is stuck in my head now!
Skeff,
ReplyDeleteThe research you have shown is kinda terrifying. I think this idea goes back to how we like to say "pray for las vegas" but beyond that nothing else is done from the majority of people. I also don't think people are "talking" about it because of the white privilege. We (white people) see other whites as "equals" that must have something wrong with them in order to do something horrible. But if it is a non-white, going back to your quote from Delpit, blame the group as whole.
Amazing research here. I've been thinking about this ongoing debate: how much do we as a society have an obligation to let mourning be mourning, and focus on the immediate human aspect of suffering through tragedies like this? And how much do we have an obligation to take terrible moments like this to reflect on policy issues like gun control, or social issues like pervasive forms of racial privilege and oppression?
ReplyDelete