race & murder

Catherine Driscoll catherine.driscoll at adelaide.edu.au
Wed May 5 03:45:14 PDT 1999


At 21:33 28/04/99 PDT, you wrote:
> From catherine.driscoll at adelaide.edu.au Wed Apr 28 21:13:33
> 1999
>
> >And hey: can we stop calling these two "kids" ...?
>
> What would you call them then?
>
>I just mean that by calling them 'kids' we're making this more of an
>issue about "the children" (if I hear Clinton say 'our children' one
>more time I'm gonna puke) than an issue about deranged sociopaths.
>Their actions were criminal and deeply anti-social; their actions were
>in no way shape or form 'child=like' ...

I understand you wanting to avoid the rhetoric of 'our children', but 'kids' doesn't mean child-like and seems the most appropriate thing to call them given the positions they took (our parents, our teachers, other kids) as well as the ones people are giving to them (kids today, our children, etc.).


>Calling them 'kids' removes at least some of the responsibility for
>their actions.

Well while they are clearly responsible I think 'at least some of the responsibility' can go to other people as well. The situation to which they are responding and the tenor of the response if not its particular form are not isolated objects nor due exactly to them.


> I would like to hear your definition of 'kids'.
>
>I think 'kids' implies a kind of innocence or at least lack of
>accountability. "They were just kids!" "We have to do something to
>save the kids!" "If we don't pass this law, how will the world be safe
>for out kids?"
>
>Bleah.

Sure, but I think that's only a fragment of what 'kids' means, and I think the first one of these at least, if not all of them, betrays a set questions about children and innocence rather than ascribing it. Children and innocence have never been very neatly aligned.

Catherine



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