GEN: A different perspective on Columbine

[Johanna Halbeisen <johanna@MASSED.NET>]

I got this article from Multicultural Pavilion and pass it to LM_NET,
needing to discuss this with this part of my community.  As Quakers say,
Courtland Milloy speaks my mind.  As the news about Columbine HS continues,
I keep feeling the way I did about the great response to Matthew Shephard's
death.  This isn't because two kids went on a killing rampage or a gay man
was brutally murdered.  These things have been happening for a long time
with no media attention or very unsympathetic attention.  It is because the
people involved were "just like us" (read "white  middle class".  I was
feeling weird about not wanting to join in the massive demonstrations and
gathering of support, but I couldn't shake the sense of the racism
screaming at me in the whole thing.  This whole thing is about our horror
that middle class white kids could do this.  But no one is saying that.
Double standard, for sure!!

>Something to consider....
>>>
>>>> >A Look At Tragedy in Black, White
>>>> >By Courtland Milloy
>>>> >Sunday, May 2, 1999
>>>> >
>>>> >Let me tell you about my parallel universe.
>>>> >
>>>> >It may exist in the same physical space as, say, my racially
>>>> >desegregated world of work. But it is a separate emotional place
>>>> >shared almost exclusively by other blacks. We may see the same things
>>>> >as whites, but we often experience them quite differently.
>>>> >
>>>> >Take the shootings at Columbine High in Littleton, Colo. In my
>>>> >parallel world, you hear comments like, "I'm so glad those killers
>>>> >weren't black. You know we'd all be in trouble if they were."
>>>> >
>>>> >This is not just to say that a certain shame is associated with black
>>>> >misbehavior. In the parallel universe, there is acute awareness that
>>>> >white America responds differently when killers are black and that its
>>>> >police apparatus can easily become a Gestapo-like operation -- as
>>>> >occurred in the aftermath of Susan Smith's claim that a black man had
>>>> >kidnapped her two white toddlers in South Carolina.
>>>> >
>>>> >In that infamous 1994 case, black men were being detained in six
>>>> >states while Smith's boys sat strapped in a car at the bottom of a
>>>> >pond where she'd left them.
>>>> >
>>>> >In Columbine, the parents of the killers were not questioned by police
>>>> >for several hours after the crimes, even though police knew that bombs
>>>> >had been made in their homes. Had the killers been black, the parents
>>>> >would no doubt have been hauled off in handcuffs in front of
>>>> >television cameras, and everybody who knew them would be under
>>>> >suspicion.
>>>> >
>>>> >In my world, you also hear, "The chickens have come home to roost."
>>>> >There is a feeling that if more attention had been paid to America's
>>>> >"culture of violence" when it appeared to be confined to the inner
>>>> >city, these rural and suburban school shootings might have been
>>>> >prevented.
>>>> >
>>>> >"Why are all the mass murderers middle-class white men and boys?"
>>>> >Apart from the notion that black and white boys have different styles
>>>> >of aggression due to different ways of being socialized, there is a
>>>> >belief in the parallel universe that as America loses its "status" as
>>>> >a white nation in the next century, more and more white people will be
>>>> >going insane.
>>>> >
>>>> >In Columbine, a TV reporter actually referred to one of the killers as
>>>> >"a gentleman who drove a BMW." The shooters also were referred to as
>>>> >members of a "clique," not a gang, and they were -- we were reminded
>>>> >again and again -- so full of academic promise.
>>>> >
>>>> >This obvious identification with the killers, and the reluctance to
>>>> >demonize them as blacks would have been, did not go over well in the
>>>> >parallel universe.
>>>> >
>>>> >"As the media tries to soften the racist element in this tragedy,"
>>>> >came an e-mail from Asiba Tupahache, in New York, "one student in the
>>>> >library said she heard them laugh after shooting the black young
>>>> >athlete and said, 'Oh, look! You can see his brains.' With that kind
>>>> >of attitude, these guys could have had lucrative careers in the NYPD."
>>>> >
>>>> >Writing for the Baltimore Afro American newspaper, columnist Wiley A.
>>>> >Hall 3rd recalled America's knee-jerk response to gun violence when it
>>>> >was being portrayed as unique to urban areas.
>>>> >
>>>> >"Politicians talked about the need to crack down on what they
>>>> >described as tough young urban hoodlums who are terrorizing the city,"
>>>> >he wrote. "Sociologists blamed negligent urban parents who fail to
>>>> >instill civilized values in their children. Police promised to make
>>>> >more arrests. Prosecutors promised more convictions. And judges
>>>> >promised to send more teenaged offenders to do hard time in adult
>>>> >institutions."
>>>> >
>>>> >Now, in the aftermath of Columbine, the finger is being pointed at "a
>>>> >culture of alienation," and there is talk of improving school
>>>> >curriculums, controlling guns, regulating the Internet and installing
>>>> >V-chips in our TVs.
>>>> >
>>>> >It's not just that it looks like excuses are being made for the
>>>> >killers at Columbine; it's that some of them are the same ones that
>>>> >were so roundly rejected when used to explain violence among blacks.
>>>> >
>>>> >The one about how the killers' status as outcasts was to blame really
>>>> >struck a nerve.
>>>> >
>>>> >"Those of us whose high school experiences also included being
>>>> >racialized have a more compounded view of this kind of labeling,
>>>> >discrimination and outcasting," Tupahache wrote. "Only our visible
>>>> >resistance made them drug us, call us troubled, got us abruptly
>>>> >reprimanded, kicked out with no questions asked. Others can wear
>>>> >swastikas, make disturbed videos and show it in class and all is
>>>> >quiet."
>>>> >
>>>> >Such feelings and concerns from the parallel universe occasionally
>>>> >break out into the other world.
>>>> >
>>>> >In the New York Times on Friday, Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson
>>>> >lamented that "there is a disturbing double standard in the way we
>>>> >discuss the problems of different groups of people and in the way we
>>>> >label deviant behavior. If the terrorist act of white, middle-class
>>>> >teenagers creates an orgy of national soul-searching, then surely the
>>>> >next time a heinous crime is committed by underclass African-American
>>>> >or Latino kids, we should engage in the same kind of national
>>>> >self-examination."
>>>> >
>>>> >His was an eloquent appeal for love and understanding in a world where
>>>> >justice is truly colorblind. In my parallel universe, however, we
>>>> >aren't holding our breath.
>>>> >
>>>> >c Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

---------------------
Johanna Halbeisen
Woodland Elementary School (preK-4)
80 Powder Mill Rd.
Southwick, MA 01077
johanna@massed.net

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