How is he not in that structure? This is notn some lone nut job. He felt alienated and acted out, but he got those ideas somewhere. Apparently, he was a middle class kid.
Do you know how angering and frustrating it is to constantly be pointing out problems in our society and constantly told it’s all in your head? When you can see it and are affected by it? Because that’s what mainstream society does to black people on a daily basis. Their children are being shot for existing, and it’s not a problem apparently, just a few bad apples, nothing to see here. History has nothing to do with this… it’s all in your head. I stand with the black community on this issue because they are right. I’m sick of it, too and want something different. I’m tired of constantly having this gulf open up because some white people can’t get their head about what white supremacy is and what it does. It kills black children. How does that not tear you up inside, that’s it’s done in the name of skin color.
No, I’m afraid not, because it is.
[ETA] and SC goes right along flying that hateful flag:
Blaming mental illness is an easy way to avoid blaming white supremacism, and shift the blame from the most powerful to some of the least powerful people in our society.
As long as our society make excuses for events like this - “lone wolf”, “mentally Ill”, etc, it’s not going to get better.
But white supremacy makes them monolithic. That’s part of the problem.
Fine, that was out of line. But white supremacy kills those kids with toy guns and swords.
I’m not sure what you mean by that, because this is about white supremacy, and that’s not going to go away. The guy was a racist. The guy was connected to white supremacist organizations. The guy sat in a bible study for an hour and then shot a bunch of people. Because they were black. Our culture subtle reinforces white supremacy.
What actually needs to happen for you to accept that this was a white supremacist shooting and that this is a problem?
This story is about white supremacy, because a white supremacist shot 9 people, after sitting with them for a bible study for an hour, because they were black.
The story is about murder. The murder is clearly a racist one. As such, the line of discussion I was following is that we may want to look at his parents since people aren’t born racist but rather made that way. I’m concerned that we are most likely dealing with generational racism passed down from parent to child. That’s when the racist people on this forum attacked me for not hating white people I suppose. Or maybe it was that I didn’t spew the talking points they wanted me to. Who knows? I responded to them and you decided to take my responses out of context and imply I was making false equivalency.
I’ve made it clear that I was in no way making such claims or even implying them. Everything I’ve posted is still here for you to review. Why you keep yanking my chain I cannot understand.
Because I think this story is about white supremacy. I don’t think it came just from his parents, but from many places, as we have a culture that subtle reinforces white supremacy.
I’m not yanking your chain. I promise. You know me better than that. I’m a seriously mad and sick and tired of hearing about white supremacy has nothing to do with events like this, or with the murder of black children by police, or the disproportionate numbers of black men in prison. Aren’t you tired of living in a racist, sexist society?
Despite the fact that the dude was an active white supremacist, there are plenty of people who claim he was not. But he claimed that status for himself.
I only know the public story that it was created in response to police brutality and racism in Oakland, CA during the late 60’s and focused on arming citizens and community improvement programs.
I argued at some length that this is an oversimplification. @ActionAbe argued even more effectively for the same thing. If you’re not going to engage with the arguments already in play, I’m not sure why I should take your opinion seriously.
The point is that it’s a “longer story” in both cases, and trying to pin the whole thing on “mental illness” is a facile distraction from very serious problems in our society.
I think your criticism might make more sense had you included a means of establishing intent to commit terrorism and to explain why the current case wouldn’t qualify. As it is, you seem to be making a blanket statement that terrorism is a logical impossibility because no one can read minds. If you had qualified it at all, I wouldn’t have made the argument I did.
I have no idea what Fox says about them but I currently live in Dallas and I can assure you that it is a real organization with real people. I’ve met Mr. Lewis aka Malik Zulu Shabazz myself.
They seem mostly harmless but like any group some members are wackadoo.
Okay, so could you remind me again why you thought, in the context of this thread about a white supremacist murderer, that it was important to even bring up the Black Panthers?
I think it was in response to @marilove who said that there were not black supremacist groups… @decree pointed to a list of organizations that he indicated were indeed black supremacists.
Blaming mental illness is an easy way to avoid blaming white
supremacism, and shift the blame from the most powerful to some of the
least powerful people in our society.
Yes.
And, well yes, killing bunch of people because of the colour of their skin (or their religion, or their gender, etc…) is a crazy thing to do in that it is not rational, not actually justifiable according to rational thought – and in that sense someone who does it could be said to be “crazy.” Yet simply saying that the killer is “crazy” hardly explains what they did. The gunman may be mentally ill, but his mental state does not in itself explain why he did what he did.
It isn’t an accident that certain groups get singled out again and again for attacks. I haven’t heard about freemasons or redheads being targeted, for example. So, yeah, It may be crazy to kill people for asinine reasons, but there is an active culture of hatred/fear that directs such brutality towards particular groups – and which is not limited (alas) to mentally ill people. No one studies the holocaust and says, “Well, Hitler was crazy, so that is why it happened.” This is hardly the first time in American history that black people have been killed in cold blood for the crime of being black. The story is much larger than the mental state of one guy.
Fox news made them out to be an incredibly dangerous organization that were harassing good white people at the polls in order to ensure that Barack Obama could continue the work of the black take over of Amurica… I mean, they didn’t say as much, but it was pretty heavily implied.
