Oh, I forgot, brown people don't count.

[theweaselking]

Virginia Tech Massacre happens again, 4.75 times over, and yet nobody seems to give two shits. I wonder why? Oh, wait, a Virginia Tech Massacre's been happening AT LEAST ONCE A MONTH for the last FOUR YEARS STRAIGHT.

And those are just the ones Americans are responsible for.

See also: headlines of "worst massacre in US history" that appear to have completely missed a half dozen others where the victims were Americans, and that's leaving alone all the others where the Americans were just the shooters, not the victims. My Lai, anyone?

Why do I keep forgetting that having brown skin means you're not really human? I keep getting told that by Fox and CNN and NBC, over and over again, but it never seems to sink in.

Comments

[torrain.livejournal.com]

I suspect that it's expected to be understood that headlines without qualifiers (i.e., "4 Bombings Kill 157 People in Baghdad") apply to citizens either in or very close to the country publishing the headline.

You know, real people.

(Still kind of surprised that the whole "worst massacre" thing is kind of glossing over the Oklahoma City Bombing. Perhaps massacre no longer applies unless hand-held weapons are involved; I'm sure the dictionaries will be updated to reflect this.)

[tsunami-ryuu.livejournal.com]

Oklahoma City, the Bath School Disaster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_school_disaster), Mountain Meadows Massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre)... the media hasn't exactly done its research.

Or it has, and simply wants to label the current story to the highest degree possible, ignoring other historical events of similar if not greater magnitude.

[spartonian.livejournal.com]

OK City and Bath School were both bombings.

Mountain Meadows wasn't one guy doing all the killing.

[affreca.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I've been frustrated with this all, and the scale of the news coverage in comparison to the the war we've been fighting for the last several years.

[larabeaton.livejournal.com]

Hmmm.... I wonder how many people in New Orleans who drowned in their attics waiting for rescue, succumbed to heat stroke, died of dehydration, were shot trying to get bread, or contracted some disease from the unsanitary conditions in the Superdome? Why is that not considered one of the worst massacres in American history?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

ObVious: the people dying in New Orleans were poor, black, or both. They obviously deserved it.

But, you know, I'm even willing to give the destruction of the World Trade Center, the Oklahoma City Bombing, and the rape of New Orleans a pass on this discussion.

Even without those three, there's been a dozen cases with a higher death toll.

[tsunami-ryuu.livejournal.com]

Correction: they are so poor and they are so black (http://www.devilducky.com/media/38857/).

[flemco.livejournal.com]

HOW POOR AND BLACK WERE THEY?

[tsunami-ryuu.livejournal.com]

SO VERY, VERY POOR AND VERY, VERY BLACK.

[tsunami-ryuu.livejournal.com]

Glad someone brought this up. It's disturbing to me how desensitized Americans (in general) are to the violence that happens in places outside of the USA.

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but Iraq doesn't have electricity. So there's no way to blame it on video games.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Now you're just baiting.

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe a little.

But it really does seem as though these things get attention mostly out of a desire to agendize them. Everybody who wants to use the body count in Iraq to make a point has plenty of ammunition to make that point already, but the number of deaths that can be linked even in the most absurd manner to some aspect of popular Western culture is relatively lower.

This kid shot up a school. So his life is being scoured for some outside source to blame for the shootings, because we don't like to think about the possibility that some people are just crazy. Everybody wants something to vilify, be it games, or the social culture of Virginia Tech, or his parents, or the fact that he's in playwriting class (I know some people who want to put on productions of his plays), or whatever. His roommates say he listened to Collective Soul (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Soul) a lot prior to the shooting, so expect them to get some flak.

The bombings? We know what the cause is, and it's not something the armchair sociopsychologists can distance themselves from or condemn, so they just don't pay attention.

[alienor77310.livejournal.com]

As to the brown skin, another example in kind:
http://yanniconny.livejournal.com/97233.html and http://yanniconny.livejournal.com/97530.html

[toku666.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that you noted this.

Not only has the Columbus Dispatch (which is always held up as a bastion of conservative conformity) been using the phrase "recent" or "modern" history when referring to V. Tech as "the worst," but they've qualified that even further by noting only mass killings involving guns.

On top of that, today's Dispatch had an amazing piece about randomly polling Iraqi citizens on the V. Tech massacre. The consensus seemed to be "that is truly tragic, but look at that crater full of dead people in front of my restaurant."

On top of THAT, yesterday's op-ed cartoon (by centrist but newly-minted anti-Bushite Jeff Stahler, who is both the Dispatch's resident op-ed cartoonist and a Columbus native) was a map outline of Virginia, with labelled dots noting the major city, but where Blacksburg is he had labelled "Baghdad." At least one moron writing in to letters to the editor had that one sail right over his head.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

"Facts" and "news" are not the same thing, and most media live from selling the latter. People being massacred in third world countries (and Muslim ones not least) falls squarely in the "fact" box, not the "news" box, unfortunately. With massacres in North America or Europe it is not so, fortunately. I don't think this has anything to do with color at all. I don't even know the color of the victims of that latest shooting. Do you think it would have not been reported - or even gotten less coverage - if they were all black or brown? It would probably have gotten MORE attention and been labeled "hate crime", as if any murder is a love crime.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

The Onion put it best.

[spartonian.livejournal.com]

What Torrain said.

Also, every article I've read or news segment I've watched has said "shooting", not "massacre".

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Most of the ones after the first 24 hours have, in fact, changed to "worst shooting in modern history", which still isn't quite accurate but it's much better. And it scans better than "worst single-shooter killing of American civilians by other American civilians in US history"

[spartonian.livejournal.com]

Have there been worse shootings in the US by a single person? The news has been very specific about it being in the US. Again, that might be specific to the items to which I've been exposed.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I don't think there have been worse shootings by a single person inside US territory in recorded history.

But that's a pretty specific set of requirements.

[atlasimpure.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I spent most of Wednesday fact-bombing VT convos with the day's headline of "176 dead in baghdad bombings".


Mind you, a lot of the people who died at VT weren't white. It resonates so much with people because they like to pretend thay're safe in their day to day lives. That direct violence only happens "over there". Nevermind the fact that more people died in car accidents that day than from gunfire.