Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thread

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zaratustra
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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thr

Postby zaratustra » Fri Jun 19, 2015 12:13 pm

Brentai wrote:Separate issues here, guys. I think we can agree that making firearms more-illegal wouldn't stop the guy in the white supremacy T-shirt from killing important black people in a church.

Then again, maybe it would. Never underestimate the power of inconvenience as a deterrent for worthless people.


HE GOT HIS GUN AS A BIRTHDAY GIFT.

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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thr

Postby Mongrel » Fri Jun 19, 2015 12:16 pm

From his dad, who knew he'd been barred from owning a gun. And thereby hangs a tale.
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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thr

Postby Mongrel » Fri Jun 19, 2015 12:20 pm

Economist: The latest American mass killing

Mainly for this paragraph:
The regularity of mass killings breeds familiarity. The rhythms of grief and outrage that accompany them become—for those not directly affected by tragedy—ritualised and then blend into the background noise. That normalisation makes it ever less likely that America's political system will groan into action to take steps to reduce their frequency or deadliness. Those who live in America, or visit it, might do best to regard them the way one regards air pollution in China: an endemic local health hazard which, for deep-rooted cultural, social, economic and political reasons, the country is incapable of addressing. This may, however, be a bit unfair. China seems to be making progress on pollution.

Or, say, suicide bombings in countries with those.
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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thr

Postby Thad » Sat Jun 20, 2015 3:14 am

Still mostly just pretty sad about all this.

People have a tendency to retreat into their corners and view tragedies through whatever lenses make sense to them -- I know I was pretty quick to jump on the blame-Fox News-and-Sarah Palin train after the Tucson shooting, with not a whole lot of evidence to back it up.

So I guess I can have a little bit of sympathy for Brianna Wu trying to attach it to the lens of the bigots she's dealt with, or even those jackasses on Fox News acting like it was about religion instead of race. (Hell, earlier today Neil Gaiman got called out for a well-meaning but poorly-thought-out tweet where he segued from the shootings into shilling for some Tor authors; he apologized and took the tweet down.) There's something deeply profane about murdering people in their house of worship; I get that even as a nonbeliever, and I can see how that's the most striking detail for some people.

As for the "Are we safe in OUR churches?" rhetoric -- well, okay, that's a bunch of stupid hysterical bullshit, but it's the sort of consistent hysterical bullshit we get from the media every time there's a mass shooting -- "Are our children safe at school?", "Are we safe going to the movies?", and so on.

But yeah there's just something so peculiar about watching the Fox News narrative. Even for a channel already dedicated to pretending like clear and unambiguous facts (like, say, biology and climate science) are just suggestions, even for a show that as recently as a couple of days before this attack was trotting out its "obviously racism doesn't exist anymore" talking points...there's no fucking ambiguity here. I mean...I guess it's possible they hadn't heard all the details about what the shooter had worn and said yet? I know I hadn't at that time yesterday. Then again, I don't work for a company that claims to be a news organization.

It's just weird, though. I feel like even people who only get their news through Fox News have got to know by now that this was a white guy killing black people because they were black.



Anyway. Back to the talk about everybody seeing things through their own lenses and frequently resorting to unrelated partisanship. It's tempting to say "Leave politics out of this", but, well, it's inherently fucking political. There are some issues that ARE related, either directly or tangentially, that deserve discussion.

I feel like gun control (1) is a nonstarter anyway and (2) is probably not directly applicable in this case. But it's still a conversation I'd rather this country spend more time on.

Mental illness...I dunno. I haven't heard anything to indicate that the shooter was mentally ill. Maybe he is and maybe he isn't. Arthur Chu at Salon has a piece called It’s not about mental illness: The big lie that always follows mass shootings by white males, and I think I'm inclined to agree: mental illness may play some part in some of these shootings -- it may or may not in this one -- but when we limit the discussion to that subject, it stigmatizes people with mental illness, and also ignores that mental illness alone doesn't lead to violence, it's often exacerbated by fear and violent rhetoric. (And, okay, one guy thought Taxi Driver was telling him to shoot President Reagan.)

Talk about the recent clashes with police, and about the Treasonous Slaveholders' Flag? That stuff's relevant. Because we're talking about centuries of festering hate. This isn't about a lone gunman. It's about a clash between the past and the future. The comforting fiction of the isolated incident (and the isolated incident before that, and the isolated incident before that, and the isolated incident before that...) needs to stop. Let's connect those damn dots.

Hell, I don't know. Not a damn thing I can say that hasn't already been said better. (Stewart was in top form last night. Wilmore was even better.) What's there to do but scream and howl and wish things were different? I can vent my liberal white guilt on the Internet, but stuff like this is so much bigger than me. It's not like I can say or do anything important.

I wish things weren't the way they are. I'm happy to see that there are people having this conversation, and I hope that something good and productive comes out of it, instead of just the same old news cycle.

I guess if there's one thing I hope, it's that this horrific act of terrorism backfires spectacularly. That it brings people together. That it gets people talking about stuff they weren't talking about, that it gets people talking to people who they weren't talking to. That it gives people a reason to reflect on our shared humanity and think that hey, maybe trying to get along is more important than all this other bullshit.

I guess I'm enough of an optimist to think that's got to happen, at least a little bit, and probably already has. And enough of a pessimist to think that in about two weeks everything's going to be more or less back to normal.

Happy Juneteenth.

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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thr

Postby IGNORE ME » Sat Jun 20, 2015 12:11 pm

Thad wrote:It's just weird, though. I feel like even people who only get their news through Fox News have got to know by now that this was a white guy killing black people because they were black.


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zaratustra
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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thr

Postby zaratustra » Sat Jun 20, 2015 4:33 pm

So yeah someone decided to write the dude's name into a reverse whois tool.
$49 later, they found his manifesto.



Go to her userpage to get the address. I'm not linking it here.

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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thr

Postby sei » Sat Jun 20, 2015 7:09 pm

So, his manifesto* says the Trayvon Martin case sparked this. It led to him wondering about disparity between "black on White crime" and and white-on-black. Underpants gnome logic follows. He then tries saving "the beauty and history of [South Carolina]" by killing black people. I wouldn't call this copycat behavior, but it lends more weight to the idea that the mass media giving mass murderers attention can promote related, follow-up incidents**.

There's some hard-core misunderstanding of privilege in there. ("Only a fourth to a third of people in the South owned even one slave. Yet every White person is treated as if they had a slave owning ancestor.")

Reading between the lines, I wouldn't be surprised if this shit was originally sparked by him being bullied. ("What about the White children who, because of school zoning laws, are forced to go to a school that is 90 percent black? Do we really think that that White kid will be able to go one day without being picked on for being White...")

Thad wrote: I feel like even people who only get their news through Fox News have got to know by now that this was a white guy killing black people because they were black.
Oversimplification.



*I'm linking it for the curious. I'm not going to be surprised if the link gets edited out. Mods, do as you will.
**Pretty sure this post isn't fueling the forum Demogorgons.
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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thr

Postby IGNORE ME » Sat Jun 20, 2015 7:46 pm

Someone explain to me why it's a dangerous thing to have that link there and I'll remove it. As it is I don't care.

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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thr

Postby Thad » Sun Jun 21, 2015 11:41 am

sei wrote:
Thad wrote: I feel like even people who only get their news through Fox News have got to know by now that this was a white guy killing black people because they were black.
Oversimplification.


Well, yes, but honestly I don't think it's much of one. Anybody who says this was an attack on Christianity instead of an attack on black people has their fingers in their ears. A church in general, and that church in particular, were chosen for specific reasons, but it's not because the shooter hates Christians.

I'm pretty comfortable starting with "this was a racially-motivated hate crime and act of domestic terrorism" and delving into details after that basic premise has been established. Even by the standards of the friendly friends at Fox and Friends, it's just weird to see people dancing around the most basic facts of the story.

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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thr

Postby Romosome » Mon Jun 22, 2015 4:13 pm

"What about the White children who, because of school zoning laws, are forced to go to a school that is 90 percent black? Do we really think that that White kid will be able to go one day without being picked on for being White..."


There's two ways to respond to abuse: Wanting to stop those doing it, or becoming them so you're on the other end. Sympathy and vengeance.

My friend that sent me a creepy, longwinded "soul saving" message apparently trying to get me to join Gamergate was like this. I don't even know what he wanted me to do, but posting something about women being harassed in a totally non videogame setting set him off. He led the conversation by saying that he knew I had been bullied in school just like him, and he apparently thought I had some kind of liberal stockholm syndrome, desperately trying to show the (people that bullied me for being a nerd) that I was one of the Good Guys.

Leaving aside the disgusting backwardsness of the idea that the only possible reason someone would believe non white guys are harassed and show empathy for them is if they're being forced, I pointed out to him that the damage in school was pretty much done by all the other boys my age who called me faggot and beat me up for being too sensitive. It fell on deaf ears though.

I'm not sure why I wrote this. I'm feeling powerless in the face of this latest incident. I want to challenge half the world to a fight. It's impotent outrage, and the fact we seem to be unable to do anything for this other than shrug, shake our heads, and keep listening to those in power tell us everything's okay is even more disturbing.

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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thr

Postby Thad » Sun Jun 28, 2015 12:29 pm



The man knows how to give a speech.

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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thr

Postby zaratustra » Sun Jun 28, 2015 4:02 pm

At least six predominantly black churches in four Southern states have been damaged or destroyed by fire in the past week.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/0 ... rch-fires/

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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thr

Postby Mongrel » Sun Jun 28, 2015 5:39 pm

Half of those have been confirmed as arson, IIRC from another article.

Also, it's up to "at least seven" now.
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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thr

Postby Mongrel » Mon Jun 29, 2015 9:53 pm

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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thr

Postby Mothra » Sun Jul 19, 2015 8:39 pm


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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thr

Postby Mongrel » Sun Jul 19, 2015 9:02 pm

There's a line some black folks have, that "At least in the South, they're very honest and open about their racism."
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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thread

Postby Büge » Tue Nov 24, 2015 9:14 am

Athought the story is still developing, it looks like white supremacists shot Black Lives Matters protesters in Minnesota.
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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thread

Postby Romosome » Tue Nov 24, 2015 7:50 pm

And people are defending their actions already.

These are, again, open white supremacists as described by the *police*.

Things are coming to a head. It's disturbing.

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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thread

Postby Thad » Wed Nov 25, 2015 12:14 am

No life-threatening injuries. That's a relief, at least.

But yeah, fuck, what a sad and scary thing.

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Re: Sadly, we still need a "white guy shoots black teen" thread

Postby Mongrel » Wed Nov 25, 2015 12:19 am

Terrorism, in the Robespierre meaning of the word.
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