Why were they obsessed with jocks and blacks? Could it be that with only 15 out of 1800 students as black, they needed an additional target that could more easily be imagined to be a threat worthy of their attention? Could it be that athletics to them represented the field in which blacks excelled? Hitler was obsessed with athletic success but this was before the embarrassment Jesse Owens visited upon him and his barbaric racial utopia. Maybe they wanted to destroy the very field of endeavor in which blacks most visibly assert their standing in society. Again, why were they obsessed with jocks? Has anyone even offered a guess?
Or could it be that they had accepted the devaluation of manual labor and the body that our society inflicts on upper tracked youth to prepare them for 'symbolic analytical' work?
Or maybe they were reacting against all the sports hype in the Denver area after two superbowl victories? Perhaps the Olympian status enjoyed by a racially integrated group of athletes spelled to them the destruction of social hierarchies and standards? It would be ironic indeed if they reacted against the fascistic spectacle of superball football by becoming followers of Hitler.
I have no idea what was going in these kids' heads; perhaps race was more important than presently recognized. Perhaps not.
What I think is important to explain is the possible media reluctance to recognize that socially sanctioned racist ideas *may* have been centrally important to the descent of these two thugs into horrifying barbarity. That if these kids had not been racists, they would not have became who they became. This presents a racist society with the disturbing dilemma of rooting out racism root and branch or taking the risk of allowing racist ideas to flourish, whatever the collateral damage.
As for this claim, "Eric had three best friends," classmate Nora Boreaux of Plattsburgh, N.Y., recalled. "One was black, one was white and one was Asian."
It would be interesting to track down these kids and ask them what they thought of Eric and his parents. Perhaps they will remember a certain level of condescension?
Yours, Rakesh