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.)

[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?

[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.

[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".

[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.