This comment will, no doubt, be lost amid the deluge of comments that already exist. But I've looked, and no one seems to be talking about this particular tangent.
IMHO, one of the more striking things about this tragedy is the differences between how society reacts to these events depending on the group membership of those involved.
That is to say, an attack from the minority (or fringe, or outcast, or oppressed) on the majority is treated vastly different from attacks from the majority on the minority. I know, not a very big surprise, but consider the example of Matthew Shepard. When a group of students killed him because of his sexual orientation, no one stopped to accuse and question and hunt for scapegoats about why they had done it, what they had experienced to turn them into such brutal murderers - rather it was just accepted, from a motivational level. No one needed to question why - the fact that Matthew was gay was good enough for the media. There was no crack down on frat houses, light beer, no profiling of suspects because they play football and wear Hilfiger (or however that's spelt) and the only thing they were punished for was the crime which they were guilty of.
In the Littleton case, to be sure there are differences, especially since some suggest racial hatred for some of the motivation, but it can't be ignored that the essential issue is that these murderers are being cast as members of a minority, and different sorts of questions are being asked that would never come up in the reverse situation.
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This comment will, no doubt, be lost amid the deluge of comments that already exist. But I've looked, and no one seems to be talking about this particular tangent.
IMHO, one of the more striking things about this tragedy is the differences between how society reacts to these events depending on the group membership of those involved.
That is to say, an attack from the minority (or fringe, or outcast, or oppressed) on the majority is treated vastly different from attacks from the majority on the minority. I know, not a very big surprise, but consider the example of Matthew Shepard. When a group of students killed him because of his sexual orientation, no one stopped to accuse and question and hunt for scapegoats about why they had done it, what they had experienced to turn them into such brutal murderers - rather it was just accepted, from a motivational level. No one needed to question why - the fact that Matthew was gay was good enough for the media. There was no crack down on frat houses, light beer, no profiling of suspects because they play football and wear Hilfiger (or however that's spelt) and the only thing they were punished for was the crime which they were guilty of.
In the Littleton case, to be sure there are differences, especially since some suggest racial hatred for some of the motivation, but it can't be ignored that the essential issue is that these murderers are being cast as members of a minority, and different sorts of questions are being asked that would never come up in the reverse situation.
My too-scents.
Mike