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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: What is Wrong with White Men?
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
This thread is inspired by a post in Hell.
The author of the linked blog, questions why race is not mentioned as it has been when the perpetrators were not white.
While I do not believe the colour of ones skin is a contributing factor, culture can be. So why, in Western countries, do white men commit more mass murder, spree killing and serial murder?
Note 1. This remains true even when adjusted for percentage of population.
Note 2. Other violent crime numbers are much more even across racial/cultural groups when adjusted for poverty and population density.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
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Mark Betts
Ship's Navigation Light
# 17074
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Posted
How is one person murdering 10 people worse than 10 people each killing one individual?
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"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
I did not make a statement of worth.
Most violent crimes, when adjusted for poverty and population percentage, are fairly even across cultural/racial groups. Mass murder, spree killing and serial murder are not. Why are these crimes more often committed by white men?
Does this clarify my question?
[ 25. July 2012, 06:08: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
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The5thMary
Shipmate
# 12953
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Posted
White men are devils! ![[Two face]](graemlins/scot_twoface.gif)
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God gave me my face but She let me pick my nose.
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Trisagion
Shipmate
# 5235
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Posted
What Paddy O'Furniture said.
lil Buddha, could you link to some evidence for the statistical claims you make, please?
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ceterum autem censeo tabula delenda esse
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Yerevan
Shipmate
# 10383
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Posted
quote:
Mass murder, spree killing and serial murder...
Though the numbers of people of any ethnicity who commit those types of crime are miniscule. It hardly proves that there is some inherent problem with white men as a group, as the thread title seems to imply, given that 99.99% of them are not serial killers.
Posts: 3758 | From: In the middle | Registered: Sep 2005
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
Rwanda anyone?
(In other words, why only talk about western countries, if you're trying to make a point about race?!)
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
(In other words, why only talk about western countries, if you're trying to make a point about race?!)
Because whenever mass killings happen in western countries and the perpetrator isn't a white man, the reporting always focuses on their race/sex as if it's part of the reason why they did it. They don't do that when it's a white man.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
(In other words, why only talk about western countries, if you're trying to make a point about race?!)
Because whenever mass killings happen in western countries and the perpetrator isn't a white man, the reporting always focuses on their race/sex as if it's part of the reason why they did it. They don't do that when it's a white man.
And this is different from the Indian press reporting on an ethnically Indian mass-murderer?
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Barnabas62
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# 9110
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Posted
I suppose the issue is incipient racism. There is something in the complaint that racial or ethnic or religious aspersions tend to be voiced at minority groups when one of these horrendous events occurs. Obviously unfair when that happens.
I doubt very much whether these rare individuals who carry out these dreadful acts do so because there is something in their historical gene pool that makes them more prone to do so, something more prevalent than in the historical gene pool of any other people group. It seems much more likely to be an illustration of how dangerous human beings may become if they crack mentally, or lose awareness of their common humanity, or (as in pyschopaths and sociopaths) never had much awareness of common humanity in the first place. And that's a problem common to all humanity.
[ 25. July 2012, 09:00: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian
Because whenever mass killings happen in western countries and the perpetrator isn't a white man, the reporting always focuses on their race/sex as if it's part of the reason why they did it. They don't do that when it's a white man.
Ah, so this thread is just a discussion about the media and has nothing to do with either racial or cultural causation, yes?
Obviously it can't be the latter, because the fact of the Rwanda genocide blows any racial and cultural argument out of the water.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Ah, so this thread is just a discussion about the media and has nothing to do with either racial or cultural causation, yes?
Gold star.
(that is to say, that's what the blog post that inspired it was about...)
[ 25. July 2012, 09:14: Message edited by: Marvin the Martian ]
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Hail Gallaxhar
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
Marvin -
Good luck with trying to reform the media.
I don't envy you in that task.
By the way... which bit of the "media" are we talking about? The lot? Some reports? It's rather a big beast, the media is, so it seems rather daft to generalise.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
(In other words, why only talk about western countries, if you're trying to make a point about race?!)
Because whenever mass killings happen in western countries and the perpetrator isn't a white man, the reporting always focuses on their race/sex as if it's part of the reason why they did it. They don't do that when it's a white man.
Except, this is true for the reporting of a large number of other events as well. Being white simply isn't a distinguishing point that's used to describe a person that is the subject of a story. Being 'ethnic' frequently is. Depending on context, one gender might be considered worth noting as a distinguishing feature when the other gender wouldn't.
I occasionally pause to reflect on reporting that someone is a 'grandmother' or something like that. Because I can't recall the last time a story about an adult in the same kind of context that gets you 'grandmother' decided to casually mention that the person was childless. Apparently there are some things you can do that are considered remarkable if you've had children and they've also gone on to reproduce.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
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Anselmina
Ship's barmaid
# 3032
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Posted
Wasn't Anders Breivik racially motivated (amongst other things eg, anti-feminist, anti-multicultural, anti-Islam, anti-Marxistetc)?
I have no idea how that affects the OP.
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Mark Betts
Ship's Navigation Light
# 17074
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anselmina:
Wasn't Anders Breivik racially motivated (amongst other things eg, anti-feminist, anti-multicultural, anti-Islam, anti-Marxistetc)?
Apparantly yes, but I've no idea what was going on in his head during all those years of planning.
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"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
This thread is inspired by a post in Hell.
The author of the linked blog, questions why race is not mentioned as it has been when the perpetrators were not white.
While I do not believe the colour of ones skin is a contributing factor, culture can be. So why, in Western countries, do white men commit more mass murder, spree killing and serial murder?
Note 1. This remains true even when adjusted for percentage of population.
Note 2. Other violent crime numbers are much more even across racial/cultural groups when adjusted for poverty and population density.
lilBuddha - the original linked article asks "Why is no one asking what’s wrong with White Men in the United States?" (despite the title). You have extended that to all Western countries, so I presume you have some statistical evidence for this. Can you please share it with us? I ask this not to put you on the spot, but because if true it may show contry to country variability which itself may tell us something.
Though just thinking of the UK, most of our recent mass killings have not been by white men (in the general sense).
Yes, I'm sure culture will be a factor in here somehow. But there is also a statistical point to make. These are very rare events as has already been pointed out. Any population has its extreme outliers. Asking what is wrong with a population on the basis of its most extreme outliers makes little sense, even though there is definitely a more nuanced discussion to be had.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
To me, the interesting question isn't why these men's whiteness is never discussed in the media, since we surely know the answer to that. The interesting question is why so many mass murderers in the USA seem to be white.
One commentator says it's to do with white male privilege:
http://nonviolentconflict.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/why-most-mass-murderers-are-privileged-white-men-by-hugo-schwyzer/
The most interesting paragraph in his article is this:
It’s not that white men are more violent. Rates of domestic violence, including homicide, are roughly the same across all ethnic groups. Statistically, murderers are more likely to kill family members and intimate partners than strangers. But while men from all backgrounds kill their spouses, affluent white men are disproportionately represented in the ranks of our most infamous mass murderers. In other words, the less privileged you are, the less likely you are to take your violence outside of your family and your community.
One thing I notice is that 'black on black crime', both in the USA and in the UK is often gang related. The two groups of people involved probably have a history with each other, and the animosity may be mutual. Sometimes they'll kill strangers to get something such as a car or money. In all these cases, there's some sort of external, tangible thing going on. Conversely, in the case of the mass killers, it all seems to be in their heads. And they always seem to be very lonely people. Loneliness seems to be less of an issue with black on black crime....
But I fully accept that this is all spectulation, and proper research needs to be done.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Though just thinking of the UK, most of our recent mass killings have not been by white men (in the general sense).
Ooh, now hang on.
If you want mass or serial killers, they're all pretty much white men, with a few white women. Brady. Sutcliffe. Ryan. Shipman. Hamilton. Bird.
The only exceptions to this are 7/7 terrorist attacks.
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Forward the New Republic
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
I have no idea whether Hugo Schwyzer's argument - that white males feel they "own" public space - is supportable. However it's interesting that the one of the worst non-terrorist non-white spree killers in the US (or the worst?) - David Burke - was operating in territory over which he clearly (and unfortunately) had privileged access rights, and therefore a sense of ownership/entitlement.
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
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Yerevan
Shipmate
# 10383
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Posted
There is a legitimate question around why white men in the US are statistically more like to comment these extremely rare kinds of crime, without jumping into some kind of Why White Men Are To Blame For Everything Ever crapfest. Is it possible that ethnic minority cultures in the US are more likely to have the kind of safety nets which prevent an individual's social marginalisation/alienation escalating out of control? Or is it also, as another poster has said, that traditional American white male privilege makes it somewhat harder for white men to deal with particular kinds of frustration?
Posts: 3758 | From: In the middle | Registered: Sep 2005
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Though just thinking of the UK, most of our recent mass killings have not been by white men (in the general sense).
Ooh, now hang on.
If you want mass or serial killers, they're all pretty much white men, with a few white women. Brady. Sutcliffe. Ryan. Shipman. Hamilton. Bird.
The only exceptions to this are 7/7 terrorist attacks.
The point I was trying to make though, Doc Tor (which I could have been more explicit about) was the "recent" point. Of your list, only Derek Bird I think comes more recently than the 7/7 group of murderers. Or to put it another way, the results of any enquiry are to an extent dependent on the questions you ask - and indeed how you frame the whole issue. If we are to avoid confirmation bias we need to question how robust the original assertions are. Posing apparent contradictions is a way to address that.
In this case I think there is something in there, but I suspect it needs refining.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
There's something in the "privileged" white men theory. A lot of white men have been used to being the in the top group, or, at least, being associated with the top group, which means they could be superior to other groups that are now becoming equal to them. The virulence of racism (e.g. the policeman who was disciplined recently for talking about what weapons he would use to kill Obama) or anti-feminism ("have to keep those females in their place") or gay-bashing ("they aren't supposed to be visible - that makes ME uncomfortable" indicates a loss of status as perceived by the speaker.
Breivik conflated several of those themes and attacked the other privileged group, the ones who made Norway more liberal (and therefore more equitable. George Sodini shot 12 women, killing three of them, because "young women have lots of sex, but not with me". The Montreal Massacre was committed by a man who had the idea that women coming into a technical field were taking away his job prospects.
This isn't the only motive, obviously. The copycat shooting in Taber, Alberta, was more about teenage angst and confusion than it was about organised thought, for instance.
But it is notable in the US and Canada that a lot of the events are committed by whites who feel they are swimming against the tide of changing attitudes.
Indeed, given the difficulties that women or blacks or gays have had, it is very rare for attacks in the opposite direction to occur.
Holmes may have had too much internal pressure towards success in a competitive field, so that he snapped in a very cerebral way, but we may never know his motives for sure.
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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Twilight
Puddleglum's sister
# 2832
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Note 2. Other violent crime numbers are much more even across racial/cultural groups when adjusted for poverty and population density.
Make enough adjustments and little girls commit the most murders. I don't really see the reason for "adjusting for poverty," in the case of mass murder. Poverty might cause more thefts but mass murder requires enough money to buy expensive weapons. Pressures of university studies might cause a sense of distance from humanity more than life in a poor neighborhood where at least there is sometimes a sense of company in misery.
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footwasher
Shipmate
# 15599
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Posted
@Yerevan
And these particular types of frustration have a name:
Quote
2. postal
1. to go on a shooting spree, especially at a workplace
2. to snap out in a psychotic rage
OK OK, don't go postal over it.
Urban Dictionary
[ 25. July 2012, 11:22: Message edited by: footwasher ]
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Ship's crimp
Posts: 927 | From: pearl o' the orient | Registered: Apr 2010
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Yerevan
Shipmate
# 10383
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Posted
To what extent are differing patterns of gun ownership a factor in mass killings? For example if white men are statistically more like to own and use firearms, then it is hardly surpising that they are more likely to express their frustrations those kinds of ways.
Posts: 3758 | From: In the middle | Registered: Sep 2005
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Yerevan
Shipmate
# 10383
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Posted
Of course if one includes politically motivated mass killings than arguably most European peacetime mass killings since 1945 have been committed by minorities (Northern Irish republicans, Basques, Muslims).
Posts: 3758 | From: In the middle | Registered: Sep 2005
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
[b]Though just thinking of the UK, most of our recent mass killings have not been by white men (in the general sense).
Ooh, now hang on.
If you want mass or serial killers, they're all pretty much white men, with a few white women. Brady. Sutcliffe. Ryan. Shipman. Hamilton. Bird.
The only exceptions to this are 7/7 terrorist attacks.
The point I was trying to make though, Doc Tor (which I could have been more explicit about) was the "recent" point. Of your list, only Derek Bird I think comes more recently than the 7/7 group of murderers.
Raoul Moat also comes to mind, although he had two accomplices who helped him in the background.
In the UK the ethnic minority population is much smaller than in the USA, but since most British Muslims tend to be of Asian (or African) descent, Islamic terrorists (or would-be terrorists) are most likely to be non-white. Some of them have been converts, though.
I suppose there are psychologists who've tried to find a common thread that links all of these different kinds of killings.
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
The point I was trying to make though, Doc Tor (which I could have been more explicit about) was the "recent" point. Of your list, only Derek Bird I think comes more recently than the 7/7 group of murderers.
Point taken - but take a random selection of the British public and ask them to name mass or serial murderers, and very few of them will include terrorist bombings or shootings (bearing in mind that the IRA were (almost?) all white).
There are others post-2005 who've taken several lives at once, or subsequently found guilty of serial killing.
This website, while being a little on the macabre side appears reasonably accurate.
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Forward the New Republic
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Though just thinking of the UK, most of our recent mass killings have not been by white men (in the general sense).
Ooh, now hang on.
If you want mass or serial killers, they're all pretty much white men, with a few white women. Brady. Sutcliffe. Ryan. Shipman. Hamilton. Bird.
The only exceptions to this are 7/7 terrorist attacks.
I'm not sure that's statistcally significant.
Sorry, that''s an English way of sayuing it isn't statistcally significant. If you took five to ten or twenty peopel at random from the British population there is quite a high chance they'd all be white. A hundred, not so much.
And I think I agree that political murder is different. The peope who blow up buses or hijack aircraft and so on are not doing it for the same reasons as the people who beat up women in dark alleyways. So if the hypothesis was that there was somethig in the cuture or upbringing of withe British men that makes them more likely to be mass murders, the specifically political crimes are not evidence against it.
One thing is statistically significant of course - nearly everyone who does these things is male.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Yerevan
Shipmate
# 10383
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Posted
quote:
And I think I agree that political murder is different. The peope who blow up buses or hijack aircraft and so on are not doing it for the same reasons as the people who beat up women in dark alleyways.
It depends. Certainly in Northern Ireland there were paramilitaries who used politics as a cover for clearly pyschopathic behaviour. The Shankill Butchers (a Belfast loyalist gang who abducted, tortured and killed random Catholics in the 1970s) are the most clearcut example. Yet even in less obvious cases I wonder what pyschological factors influenced the relatively small percentage of Northern Irish people willing to actively plan and carry out mass killings. Ditto any other terrorist campaign.
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aumbry
Shipmate
# 436
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Posted
There have been plenty of black serial killers in America, only recently I recall there was the discovery that the Washington Sniper was a black man. Perhaps the reason they are overlooked is that their victims are often poor and disadvantaged and some how don't count for much in the media. The white killers hit the news because they often kill in the safe bourgeoise world.
[ 25. July 2012, 16:01: Message edited by: aumbry ]
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
The Washington Sniper was balck - actually the two people involved were black - but ISTM that the victims were pretty much chosen at random. The act of shooting was more significant than the victims chosen.
And the psychology is different because there were two, not one, involved.
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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aumbry
Shipmate
# 436
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
The Washington Sniper was balck - actually the two people involved were black - but ISTM that the victims were pretty much chosen at random. The act of shooting was more significant than the victims chosen.
And the psychology is different because there were two, not one, involved.
I was not referring to the victims of the Washington Sniper but perhaps should have been clearer. I gather the second partcipant was a boy who was no doubt under the influence of the older man - I cannot see why this would be psychologically different even if it was relevant.
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
Ken wrote: quote:
One thing is statistically significant of course - nearly everyone who does these things is male.
It certainly seems that way considering (say) the last 50 years.
But it is less clear in some areas if you go back. Before that, it seems like mass poisoning was pretty much an equal opportunity crime. And probably the most famous mass poisoning of history, L'affaire des poisons in the late 17th century France looks like it may have been more a female than a male thing.
Pre-revolutionary France is an utterly different culture to any 21st century "western" culture, so that observation is of limited relevance, save perhaps to point out that the current situation may not be inevitable. Which may be helpful.
I think the article which SvitlanaV2 linked to in her earlier post is interesting, and makes quite a lot of sense. There is something about it though which has been nagging me since this morning, which is the use of "privilege" in the sense that author uses it.
Normally, an egalitarian would (I hope) point out the injustice of people benefiting from privileges such as high levels of inherited wealth, access to better education etc. etc. But the use of privileges here is not just about these. The argument is primarily
quote:
Put simply, they did what they did because of an individual sickness—but they did it where they did it in part because of white privilege.
It’s not that white men are more violent. Rates of domestic violence, including homicide, are roughly the same across all ethnic groups. Statistically, murderers are more likely to kill family members and intimate partners than strangers. But while men from all backgrounds kill their spouses, affluent white men are disproportionately represented in the ranks of our most infamous mass murderers. In other words, the less privileged you are, the less likely you are to take your violence outside of your family and your community.
It's that the white perpetrators are acting in an arena in which they feel to be at home. Specifically, that they are privileged (by being white) to feel at home in these places.
I'm uneasy about conflating these two uses of "privilege". I would like everybody to feel equally at home in the public square. There is nothing there I would want to take away from anyone, indeed I would like to see whatever inhibits this inequality to be removed. Surely we are talking about people being underprivileged to feel not at home, which may look like an unnecessarily fine distinction to make until you realise that it needs tackling in a very different way.
But is this observation (about the theatre of action) one that holds universally? I'm less sure about that, but honestly don't know.
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
@OP
Nothing for the general case of "white men" whatever is meant by that.
A very small group of people do these heinous things. It is not possible to argue from such a statistic that the general group is whacko or even compares.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
Who actually qualifies as a "white man" ?
OK, a man, obviously . But as for the white bit , are we including all those who originated as Western European whites ?
Anyway in the spirit of the OP, I would agree with what's been said about white males and that hard to define *superiority/space* thing .
You only have to look at the way we white males drive our cars in order to observe this.
I would say it does have it's origins in culture .
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Change is the only certainty of existence
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Jay-Emm
Shipmate
# 11411
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
You only have to look at the way we white males drive our cars in order to observe this.
I would say it does have it's origins in culture .
Really? Round here it's much a muchness.
Probably more women try to multitask and put lipstick on, try to knock me off my bike, talk on the phone and get to work.
More men do the showy, noisy (and ultimately rather disappointing) acceleration, and the random shouting. But both do both.
Both also give way occasionally (normally when there is a massive gap behind them, but it's the thought that counts)
I think the thing Non-Prophet is the 'media'/man in the pub reaction.
When Brevik does something horrible on behalf of 'white people' should do something, it's blatantly not representative and we shouldn't draw conclusions about the general group.
When the 7/7* people do something horrible on behalf of 'brown people' should do something, it blatantly is representative, and that tells us all we need to know about 'them'. etc.. etc..
(I suppose to some extent there's an element of truth, but about as much as the people saying the opposite in the Baghdad Bazaar)
*it's rather revealing I don't know their names.
Posts: 1643 | Registered: May 2006
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jay-Emm:
Really? Round here it's much a muchness.
Probably more women try to multitask and put lipstick on, try to knock me off my bike, talk on the phone and get to work.
More men do the showy, noisy (and ultimately rather disappointing) acceleration, and the random shouting. But both do both.
Point taken . My spur of the moment generalization was brought on by the recent hot weather, and noticing us men doing risky over-taking on bendy A-roads . 70s music often makes me drive more aggressively oddly enough .
Anyway none of this is to do with evil mass killers etc . Happily Devon , to my knowledge, hasn't produced to many of those despite still being overwhelmingly white Caucasian.
The potential to commit terrible evil exists in every man, woman and child ,(of any colour), past. present and future .
The only argument is what are the factors that trigger it .
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Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
It's not especially notable that nobody makes a big deal out of a mass murderer being white because in the US nobody makes a big deal out of anyone being white, except maybe when a great new pro basketball player happens to be white.
When a woman or a gay person or a person of color does something notable, whether it's good or bad, it reflects on women/gays/people of color. When white men do something notable, good or bad, they are viewed as individuals and their behavior doesn't reflect on other white men.
[ 26. July 2012, 22:58: Message edited by: RuthW ]
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Olde Sea Dog
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# 13061
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
.......The author of the linked blog,[/URL] questions why race is not mentioned as it has been when the perpetrators were not white.
......
This is a very strange thread. It's practically forbidden for the US media to point out an offender's race, whether white black or yellow ...... I believe in some places there are actual laws against doing so, or at least it's against station or newspaper policy. I haven't heard the race of a perp or suspect mentioned since ...... oh, I guess it would have been before 1980.
I guess this thread must refer to comments written after an MSM news story, but then "white" is also mentioned by those of other races, as here. And sometimes there are the hate groups, but really no one pays them much mind.
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Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Posts: 67 | From: The C of Consciousness - California | Registered: Oct 2007
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Olde Sea Dog:
It's practically forbidden for the US media to point out an offender's race, whether white black or yellow ...... I believe in some places there are actual laws against doing so, or at least it's against station or newspaper policy. I haven't heard the race of a perp or suspect mentioned since ...... oh, I guess it would have been before 1980.
That's just the news reporting, which is supposed to be factual. The commentariat has no such scruples.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Olde Sea Dog
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# 13061
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Posted
Well then, I suppose it's because mass murders and serial killings are so rare. People comment and think more about the typical violent crimes that happen on a daily basis, than about the sensational but uncommon ones.
In ordinary crime there's quite a large difference between white, Asians, Hispanics, and blacks. I'm just talking about straight FBI statistics, not adjusted for poverty etc., and I'm not mentioning possible causes - just pointing out that what people see on a daily basis is crime disproportionately committed by blacks.
I'm not being racist by saying that, although I suppose it's inevitable that I will be accused of it. To me it's a societal problem that needs to be confronted and analysed before solutions can be found.
At any rate, seeing it happen so much is why people discuss it more in terms of black/white differences. Asians also have a low crime rate, lower than white, but aren't talked about as much, perhaps because of being a much lower percentage of the population.
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Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Posts: 67 | From: The C of Consciousness - California | Registered: Oct 2007
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lilBuddha
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# 14333
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Posted
One cannot separate factors such as poverty if one is seeking a solution or to simply understand the why. Especially as the "I'm just saying" crowd are part of the continuation of the problem. (not addressing you specifically, Olde Sea Dog)
The way the media address crime is part of the perceptual problem, in regards to the victims as well as the perpetrators.
Here is an interesting monograph by the American FBI.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Ken wrote: quote:
One thing is statistically significant of course - nearly everyone who does these things is male.
It certainly seems that way considering (say) the last 50 years.
But it is less clear in some areas if you go back. Before that, it seems like mass poisoning was pretty much an equal opportunity crime. And probably the most famous mass poisoning of history, L'affaire des poisons in the late 17th century France looks like it may have been more a female than a male thing.
<snip>
I believe it's also true that suicides follow a similar pattern. Men are more likely to shoot or hang themselves; women more often use pills (or pull a Plath and stick their head in an oven, or like Anne Sexton, go to sleep in their car while it's running in the garage). I'm not sure about slitting wrists, though - that could go either way.
But the principle (if my memory is correct about the above) is that men are attracted to the more violent stuff and women to the less violent.
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
Bumping this up to add this comment from Christian Piatt.
He quotes one David Lohr (no link offered) to get going:
quote:
Typical mass murderers are usually conservative, middle-aged, white males from relatively stable, lower-to-middle-class backgrounds. These individuals usually aspire to more than they can achieve, and when they see their ambitions thwarted, they blame others for their failures. They feel exclusion and develop an irrational, and eventually, homicidal hatred of anyone they consider a hindrance to their own aspirations. Quite often, they choose to die in an eruption of violence directed at these perceived oppressors.
and then suggests six general themes for this discussion: propaganda (Breivik), role models (neo-Nazis), isolation (see below), access (gun-worship), shock-and-awe, no hope.
Much of what Lohr offers would apply to J. Holmes, and the "no hope" and "isolation" lines are also significant:
quote:
Generally, people from middle income families can afford to have their own apartment, or at least their own room that is closed off from others. And consider that suburban life is, in many ways, constructed upon the value of privacy while being surrounded by thousands of people. We can go from our home to our car in the garage to our office and back again without having much, if any, contact with anyone else. This kind of privacy can be fertile ground for unchecked aberrant behavior.
quote:
In a way, it seems absurd to suggest that middle class suburban white men are more susceptible to hopelessness, despair and depression than others. But for those in an oppressive, violent environment, the source of distress is fairly evident. But if you live in an environment where you’re supposed to be happy and content about your life, and yet you’re not, who is to blame? Such internalized hatred can turn into internalized violence which, then, can be expressed outwardly.
These are all coming from the American perspective, but I'm sure that some of the cases in England (the guy in Cumbria, for instance or Dunblane) might be worth a look.
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
These are all coming from the American perspective, but I'm sure that some of the cases in England (the guy in Cumbria, for instance or Dunblane) might be worth a look.
Apart from all being middle-aged white men who had no steady jobs, I'm not sure they had much in common.
Derrick Bird, in Cumbria, was apparently quite a popular and friendly man, but recently divorced. He started his murders with his own twin broither, which is pretty unimaginable for the rest of us, and then went on to kill his lawyer, and shoot at some people he had known for years. So it seems to have been at least some sort of revenge at first, possibly because he thought he had been cheated out of money.
If we can believe the news (and so much of it is sensationalist crowd-pleasing I'm not sure we can) Raoul Moat was a sort of disaster waiting to happen. His father had left him when he was a baby, his mother (who may have been mentally ill) and her boyfriends had often beaten him, he had had six children by different women, he was a body-building fanatic who used steroids and other drugs, he'd been arrested about twelve times for violent crimes, he worked as a bouncer in nightclubs, people who knew him said he was desperate to be in control of every social situation he was in, alwqays wanting to be in charge - almost a caricature of a popular stereotype of a macho semi-criminal lifestyle. A self-described loner but not apparently lonely - he had friends, both men and women.
Michael Ryan who killed those people at Hungerford seems to have kept himself to himsself. There was all sorts of speculation about his personality and whether or not he was mentally ill but no-one acutally came up with anything. He was also obsessed with guns and militaria. No-one seemed to have known him well at all apart from his mother, who he also killed.
Thomas Watt Hamilton who murdered all those children at Dunblane (for me personally the most frightening of all those mass-murders) had a history of been accused of being unsuitable to care for children, starting from when he was asked to stop being a scout leader (for incompetence apparently). He had complained about it again and again, writing letters to MPs and the police and newspapers and even the Queen. He was never tried for or convicted of anything. Quite unlike Moat or Ryan he seemd to be outwardly respectable and quiet. Unlike the others, which seem to have been some kind of revenge gone wrong (or even imagined self-defence for Moat), he seems to have planned what he did beforehand. The others seem to have started killing, realised they could do it, and carried on.
And of course the biggest mass-murderer in British history was a doctor who did it with prescription drugs.
So not a lot in common
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
I remember a woman in the US who shot children on a school playground.
She said she did it because she hated children. Apparently other children had teased her unmercifully when she was a child, and she had spent years fantasizing about killing children on a playground.
Moo
[ 02. August 2012, 21:57: Message edited by: Moo ]
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Carex
Shipmate
# 9643
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
...However it's interesting that the one of the worst non-terrorist non-white spree killers in the US (or the worst?) - David Burke - was operating in territory over which he clearly (and unfortunately) had privileged access rights, and therefore a sense of ownership/entitlement.
It is interesting that, while I remember the PSA crash very well (too well on occasion...) it wasn't until I followed that link that I discovered the race of the perpetrator, 25 years later. If it was announced on the news at the time, it must not have been a big deal because I don't remember it at all. (Or perhaps it was never mentioned, only shown in photos, and I was getting most of my news from the radio in those days.) Perhaps that says something about the impact of television: you don't have to explicitly call attention to a person's race (gender, etc.), you can just show a photo and let the viewers make the conclusions from that.
What I do remember, however, is that out of all of the bits and pieces of the bodies that we picked up from that muddy field in the rain, very few showed any obvious indication of the race, gender, or other characteristics of the victim. One could draw from that that we are all the same inside, though I'm sure there are much more pleasant analogies to use to make the point.
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