Monday, April 11, 2011

What Happens If We Part Away From "The Norm"?

I enjoyed Gloria Steinem's article because it really got me to think about the situation at hand and question what she was saying while ultimately forming my own opinion. Steinem discusses in Supremacy Crimes how the majority of teenagers who commit deadly shootings or promote similar threats are white heterosexual males in the middle-class sector. She claims there is a direct correlation between that piece of information and the amount of news coverage that follows. That is, because these individuals are what we as society consider "the norm", there is rarely any news coverage identifying factors that go beyond their age. For example, after a mass killing in Colorado, the main headlines were, "Twisted Teens" and "When Teens Fall Apart". Thus, these titles only point out that the murderers were young adolescents, nothing about their sexuality, race or class. Steinem is arguing that if it had been black boys or lesbian girls who had done the shooting, much more publicity would have been focused around factors other than their age: "What if dozens, even hundreds of young women around the country had made imitative threats--as young men have done--expressing admiration for a well-planned massacre and promising to do the same? Would we be discussing their youth more than their gender, as is the case so far with these male killers."

Within the article, Steinem also hints at her thoughts on why young males kill, specifically white males. She believes that these men have a pressing need for superiority and all that it entails. When white males targeted and killed black athletes, it was because they thought they were better. When white males targeted and killed white females, it was because they were seeking the power of dominance. All of these examples promote Steinem's argument that the fundamental reasoning behind why we see so many mass murders executed by young white males is because they feel as though they are entitled to certain power which she highlights as supremacy. I agree with what she is saying completely. At first I struggled with her article because it was unclear what message she was trying to convey, but in the end I saw her point. I remember coming home from school one day in high school and reading the current news on my Yahoo! homepage about the Virginia Tech shooting. Everywhere were similar titles to the effect of "Asian Male Student Goes on a Firing Streak", blatantly identifying the shooters race because it was not "the norm". It did not hit me then, as it does not after reading Steinem's article, that the inclusion of the killers race was an important factor that tells us a lot about our society.

1 comment:

  1. I think that bringing up the Virginia Tech shooting is very interesting because I can relate to your experience. Thinking back on the shooting I realize that what first comes to my mind about it is that the shooter was Asian. When I think of other shootings the race of the shooter is not the first thing I remember. This shows the way in which the media can unconsciously permeate our thoughts and our mental images. I believe that this is particularly applicable to the way in which the media perpetuates the image of the "aggressive and violent" minority male.

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