STANDARDS FREE SPEECH
ISSUE: EVERYBODY’S
EVERYWHERE
benefit of the doubt: white men. a “young man.” But 19-year-old Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz? Unequal media coverage based on demographics is nothing new A “troubled kid.” We call a man who entered a school and killed for this country. Over the past few decades, white male shooters have seventeen of his classmates a kid, while we demonize children and been humanized, given backstories to justify their actions, misrepadolescents of color who are victims of police violence. Looking at resented in their views, or depicted as “tragic geniuses,” as sensitive, these cases, one begins to see the clear divides—the clear priorities—of shy individuals, victims of a cruel world order which just couldn’t the American media. seem to fit them in. All of these angles, all of these segregated justifications and dehuThese depictions may be slightly different, but they all have one manizations, add once again to the concept of “otherness” pervasive thing in common: humanization and justification of white shooters in coverage of terrorism. White America depicts shooters as loners, and their actions. Tucson shooter Jared Loughner’s possible mental as individuals who acted completely of their own accord, in the hope illness and “troubled life” were parsed and analyzed by Time Magof dissuading citizens from seeing that systemic violence is a probazine as the driving factors behind his murder of 13 people and lem, that the greatest threat comes from within. attempted murder of six others in January 2011. Discourse on James We are told that terrorism is committed by people of color, that Holmes, who killed and injured a total of their violence is a phenomenon linked to 82 people in a movie theater in Aurora, gangs or organizations like ISIS. When it CO, described him as socially awkward and comes to threats to our society, what we see intelligent, as well as “a typical American may be many things, but it is probably not “WHITE AMERICA kid,” despite the fact that Holmes was 24 at white men. It is probably not white men with DEPICTS SHOOTERS AS the time of the shooting. guns. Because not all white people are terrorLONERS IN THE HOPE OF Dylann Roof, who killed nine black ists, no white people are. DISSUADING CITIZENS people in a church in Charleston in 2015, The thing is, America, not all people of FROM SEEING THAT was a self-professed white supremacist. Roof color are terrorists either. THE GREATEST THREAT declared that he wanted a “race war” and We must work our magic and our justice pictures emerged of Roof wearing a patch in solidarity. We must be all or nothing, beCOMES FROM WITHIN.” on his jacket which displayed the flag of cause terror means fear, and we are all afraidApartheid-era South Africa. Still, Senator -but not of them, of the nameless, racially Lindsey Graham linked his violence to hasegregated “other” as this society has tried tred of Christians rather than of black people. “There are people out to make us. Instead, we are afraid of this fractured, angry, tragic, there looking for Christians to kill them,” Graham said, disregardgenius, sensitive, shy, lonely, troubled, violent, human, inhumane ing Roof’s own assertion that his shooting was racially motivated country we all call home. and testimonials from his peers that he was segregationist and racist. In America, we are not now taking our lives in our hands. We Meanwhile, people of color victimized by police are frequently have had them tight in our fists for years, smashed up against our demonized. Trayvon Martin, who was unarmed when George Zimpassivity, our inaction, and our weak justifications of hatred, of “termerman shot him, was wearing a hoodie which ultimately became rorism” as Islamic extremism, of “thuggery” as something possessed his most important trait in the coverage of his murder. Michael if and only if one is black. Like children (like our children, like the Brown, the Ferguson, MO, victim whose shooting sparked nationones we have lost to bullets), we have clutched these outdated moniwide outrage, was described as “no angel.” Megyn Kelly said that kers to our chests. Like children, we have not given them up. Dajerria Becton, a fifteen-year-old black girl violently arrested by a In the beginning, terror meant one thing and one thing only: fear. police officer at a pool party, was “no saint.” Tamir Rice, a twelveyear-old black boy, carried a BB gun and a police officer shot him twice in the chest—after which the police force described him as
It’s time to let go.
APRIL 6, 2018 17