race & murder

digloria at mindspring.com digloria at mindspring.com
Fri Apr 23 18:48:52 PDT 1999


chaz writes
>Your vigorous argument that racism is not an important aspect of what this
tragedy represents is exactly the state of mind, ignoring the obvious, that the NYT and the whole media are triving to instill in most people.

i have NEVER once said that racism was unimportant. I said, over and over, that there is more to it than racism, that capitalist class relations are involved and that overemphasizing race may well obscure the ways in which the nihilism, the alienation that these boys felt is deeply connected to the economic structure of this society and linked with race hatred in important ways. i have called for more sophisticated nuanced explanations that examine how racism and capitalist class relations are related. i also asked for a stronger critique of the media's racial ommissions--instead, they are turning this into some sort of neo-nazi shooting frenzy when in fact i strongly suspect that what was involved was altogether too typical racism on the part of those boys. e.g., everyone gasps that they called Shoels a n----- as if they didn't know that white people throw around that word all the damn time. they gasp because they want to distance themselves and say "i'm not like that, therefore i'm not a racist"

kelley



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