School Shootings and White Denial
Tim Wise, AlterNet
March 6, 2001
I can think of no other way to say this, so here goes: white people need
to pull our heads out of our collective a$$.
Two more white children are dead and thirteen are injured, and another
"nice" community is scratching its blonde head, utterly perplexed at how
a
school shooting the likes of the one yesterday in Santee, California
could
happen. After all, as the Mayor of the town said in an interview with
CNN:
"We're a solid town, a good town, with good kids, a good church-going
town...an All-American town." Yeah, well maybe that's the problem. I said
this after Columbine and no one listened so I'll say it again: white
people
live in an utter state of self-delusion. We think danger is black, brown
and poor, and if we can just move far enough away from "those people" in
the cities we'll be safe. If we can just find an "all-American" town,
life
will be better, because "things like this just don't happen here."
Well bullsh*t on that. In case you hadn't noticed, "here" is about the
only place these kinds of things do happen. Oh sure, there is plenty of
violence in urban communities and schools. But mass murder; wholesale
slaughter; take-a-gun-and-see-how-many-you can-kill kinda craziness seems
made for those safe places: the white suburbs or rural communities.
And yet once again, we hear the FBI insist there is no "profile" of a
school shooter. Come again? White boy after white boy after white boy,
with
very few exceptions to that rule (and none in the mass shooting
category),
decides to use their classmates for target practice, and yet there is no
profile? Imagine if all these killers had been black: would we still
hesitate to put a racial face on the perpetrators? Doubtful.
Indeed, if any black child in America -- especially in the mostly white
suburbs of Littleton, or Santee -- were to openly discuss their plans to
murder fellow students, as happened both at Columbine and now Santana
High,
you can bet your ass that somebody would have turned them in, and the
cops
would have beat a path to their doorstep. But when whites discuss their
murderous intentions, our stereotypes of what danger looks like cause us
to
ignore it -- they're just "talking" and won't really do anything. How
many
kids have to die before we rethink that nonsense? How many dazed and
confused parents, Mayors and Sheriffs do we have to listen to, describing
how "normal" and safe their community is, and how they just can't
understand what went wrong?
I'll tell you what went wrong and it's not TV, rap music, video games or
a
lack of prayer in school. What went wrong is that white Americans decided
to
ignore dysfunction and violence when it only affected other communities,
and
thereby blinded themselves to the inevitable creeping of chaos which
never
remains isolated too long. What affects the urban "ghetto" today will be
coming to a Wal-Mart near you tomorrow, and unless you address the
emptiness, pain, isolation and lack of hope felt by children of color
and
the poor, then don't be shocked when the support systems aren't there
for
your kids either.
What went wrong is that we allowed ourselves to be lulled into a false
sense of security by media representations of crime and violence that
portray both as the province of those who are anything but white like us.
We
ignore the warning signs, because in our minds the warning signs don't
live
in our neighborhood, but across town, in that place where we lock our
car
doors on the rare occasion we have to drive there. That false sense of
security -- the result of racist and classist stereotypes -- then gets
people killed. And still we act amazed.
But listen up my fellow white Americans: your children are no better, no
nicer, no more moral, no more decent than anyone else. Dysfunction is all
around you, whether you choose to recognize it or not.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, and Department of Health
and
Human Services, it is your children, and not those of the urban ghetto,
who
are most likely to use drugs. That's right: white high school students
are
seven times more likely than blacks to have used cocaine; eight times
more
likely to have smoked crack; ten times more likely to have used LSD and
seven times more likely to have used heroin. In fact, there are more
white
high school students who have used crystal methamphetamine (the most
addictive drug on the streets) than there are black students who smoke
cigarettes.
What's more, white youth ages 12-17 are more likely to sell drugs: 34%
more
likely, in fact than their black counterparts. And it is white youth who
are twice as likely to binge drink, and nearly twice as likely as blacks
to
drive drunk. And white males are twice as likely to bring a weapon to
school
as are black males.
And yet I would bet a valued body part that there aren't 100 white
people
in Santee, California, or most any other "nice" community who have ever
heard a single one of the statistics above. Even though they were
collected
by government agencies using these folks' tax money for the purpose.
Because the media doesn't report on white dysfunction.
A few years ago, U.S. News ran a story entitled: "A Shocking look at
blacks and crime." Yet never have they or any other news outlet discussed
the "shocking" whiteness of these shoot-em-ups. Indeed, every time media
commentators discuss the similarities in these crimes they mention that
the
shooters were boys, they were loners, they got picked on, but never do
they
seem to notice a certain highly visible melanin deficiency. Color-blind,
I
guess.
White-blind is more like it, as I figure these folks would spot color
mighty damn quick were some of it to stroll into their community.
Santee's
whiteness is so taken for granted by its residents that the Mayor, in
that
CNN interview, thought nothing of saying on the one hand that the town
was
82 percent white, but on the other hand that "this is America." Well that
isn't America, and it especially isn't California, where whites are only
half of the population. This is a town that is removed from America, and
yet its Mayor thinks they are the normal ones -- so much so that when
asked
about racial diversity, he replied that there weren't many of different
"ethni-tis-tities." Not a word. Not even close.
I'd like to think that after this one, people would wake up. Take note.
Rethink their stereotypes of who the dangerous ones are. But deep down, I
know better. The folks hitting the snooze button on this none-too-subtle
alarm are my own people, after all, and I know their blindness like the
back of my hand.
Tim Wise is a Nashville-based writer and activist and can be reached at
tjwise@mindspring.com <mailto:tjwise@mindspring.com>
i couldnt have sumed it up much better. except for a few "foul" language corrections i made, its akk tim Wise. if u wanna email the guy who wrote the article, theres his address.
U guys have the right to bear firearms?? Why the hell would any civilized nation allow their people to carry around guns??
