Race & Murder/ Strawperson of "only racism"

EmaChissit at cs.com EmaChissit at cs.com
Tue Apr 27 20:28:07 PDT 1999



>
> Chas.: Why is it so difficult to understand that they could hate jocks and
> be racist too ? I mean beside the fact that you don't think admiring Hitler
> is some evidence of racism.

No one has denied that they were racists. We are trying to argue over the degree to which is played a significant factor. I don't believe that race hatred played a significant role in their decision to try to blow up a school and all the other things revealed in their diary. Your claim earlier was that you believed that the idea that they hated jocks was not nearly as significant as that they were racists. My contention is that there is no reason to ignore both of these factors, and it appears quite evident that it was a complex set of factors that motivated them to act this way.


> Chas.: So, do you think members of the KKK ONLY hate black people ? You
don'
> t think members of the KKK might hate white people with higher status than
> them ?

Absurd and completely unrelated to anything we are discussing here.


>You think that if I attribute racism to someone, I think they can't
> have other motives or hatreds ?

Of course you may attribute racism to folks. The question is, to what degree to race hatred or white supremacy if you will played a role in motivating them to behave the way they did. I don't think that their race hatred was a primary factor here. If you want to target a group of people it is really quite easy to figure out a way to kill them.


> It is really pretty simple. You are making a
> kind of elementary logical error. Being alienated from their high school
> scene in general, hating jocks and all that DOES NOT CONTRADICT their
> simultaneously being racist.

No one ever said they weren't racist. You think we deny racism, when what we are suggesting is their race hatred wasn't necessarily a significant motivating factor in causing them to do what they did.


> (((((((((((((((((((
>


> Chas. I am not having the least bit of trouble understanding it. It is as
> simple as the word "and".

You quite literally sneered at the idea early on, to wit:

" The main thing was they hated athletes". Yea, right, a big social problem in U.S. history and society, the hate of atheletes."

You couldn't fathom it. You thought it ever so much silliness.

They were racist AND they hated jocks. You seem to
> think that if they hated jocks , they couldn't also be racist. Why exactly
is
> that ? As to "exploring other social factors, I said nothing against that.

You most certainly did. You certainly like to twist people's words around. I believe that I have always said they were racists. I've challenged you as to your ludicrous claim early on that any talk about them hating jocks was simply a media maneuver designed to obfuscate racism. Plainly not.


> You are the one who leapt to the conclusion that saying racism is a
> significant factor means there can't be other factors. I have often
denounced
> the dog-eat-dog, rat race mentality that capitalism creates. I have
"explored"
> in many situations. It dovetails with racism.

You have offered the altogether too easy answer that they were neo-Nazi's. I see no evidence for this, no evidence for any organized belief system on their part.


> CB: There's a lot of it in the news. Here's one :"Dylan Klebold and Eric
> Harris hurled insults at Jews, blacks and Hispanics". I heard the sheriff
at
> a press conference over the weekend. He said from the evidence they had the
> boys seemed to be doing a "Nazi thing" and that the day of the incident was
> because it was Hitler's birthday. That is evidence of the type you ask for.

So? What does this mean? Does this necessarily mean that they were really Nazi's? Neo-nazi sympathizers?

There was a website turned over to the police in which Harris denounces racists. There are newsgroup posts from his email account where he denounces racism. Some students said that they actually wore an anti nazi insignia.

Nazism simply requires a cleansing of the pure from the impure and those impure could be defined as any group whatsoever. There is no necessary need for their interest in Nazism to automatically signal racism as in *white* supremacy. Earlier in this century there was an attempt to define poor whites as a separate race. In the 1800s there were thought to be 6 different races. Race is an historically and socially constructed category and racism, the particular modalities it manifests, is historically and socially constructed as well.


> "Primarily"motivated is you playing games. Their racism was a significant
> factor in the sad mixture of thoughts that made them do it. Your effort to
> basically say that racism was NOT a significant factor is a disservice
anyone
> trying to learn the lessons of this tragedy.

You keep saying this over and over and yet I'll hazard a guess that you can't find one post where I said racism wasn't a factor. I simply object to anyone saying that this was primarily motivated by race. I objected to your earlier comments in which you dismissed their hatred of jocks as a farce perpetrated by the media. The media does cover up racism on a regular basis. No one has denied that. The media is a racist, sexist, classist, and heterosexist institution.

Emma Chissitt



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