>>> <EmaChissit at cs.com> 04/27/99 11:55PM >>>The hostility was provoked by your misreading of my original post. It was
also provoked by sloppy usage of words like fascism and nazism. As I recall,
this thread started because Charles Brown believed that racism explained a
great deal. He believed that the idea that these young men hated jocks was
ludicrous. Others jumped in on occasion to buttress this point without
offering much in the way of reasoning or evidence.
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Chas.: This is inaccurate. What I said was that the anti-jock cause of the incident was not as socially significant as the racism. To elaborate some here, the racism and nazism are necessary causes of the mass murder dimension. Anti-jock mentality is not associated with mass murder.
(((((((((((((((( The question could also easily be, "Why is it so easy to hurl the label racist at anyone who doesn't necessarily think that racism was a primary factor in this incident?" I am NOT saying that you said this. However, I do think that the race card is getting played here and that does bother me. I find it entirely understandable, but ultimately unproductive. I would add that I don't appreciate one sided explanations which attribute sexism to an event either.
Chas.: This is exactly where I disagree. It should be easy to hurl the term racist at someone who denies the racism in this incident. That's a main point. Concern about people using the label "racist" too much IS ITSELF A MAIN FORM OF RACISM TODAY. Most people are not fascistic racists in America. After Reagan a main aspect of racism has become the denial of it, including such usages as "the race card getting played". That is exactly a phrase from the widest type of racist thinking today, the socalled banal racism that Angela referred to.
Nobody is misreading your posts. Here it is in Black and White, exactly what I am criticizing. (((((((((((((((((((((
As was pointed out early on, if this were an incident motivated largely by race hatred against blacks, hispanics, Jews (and yes people do and have define Jews as a race) then it would seem likely that they would target large groups of those groups. They did not. They killed, intentionally, one black man. They set out to kill many many more people at random, apparently whites. They ended up kill mainly whites. Early on people on this list dismissed this as important. They argued that killing whites was incidental.
They argued that it was some sort of cover up for really wanting to kill blacks, etc. (((((((((((((((((((((((((
Chas: A sort of statistical refutation might be based on the percentages. There were about 15 Blacks in the whole school of many hundreds. Percentage wise , one Black person (and I think one Hispanic) out of 13, was disproportionately large. Also, with so few , there just may not have been that many Black people around.
But the more important point is the killers loudly professed Hitlerism and racism, killing on Hiter's birthday. Hitler's criminality was not just racism. He killed more non-Jews than Jews etc. The point is the complex of racism and mass murderism in Nazism or fascistic racism. The very important point, that should get white people's attention is that racism ends up getting white people killed too, not that these crazy racists are logically incosistent somewhat in that regard. Everybody has an interest in eradicating racism, not just racially targetted groups.
Charles Brown