A TEACHING MOMENT: WATCHING THE DUOPOLY'S EVASIONS ON THE GEORGIA SCHOOL SHOOTING -- WHY DO YOU THINK THIS IS?
- Gonzalo Santos
- Sep 5, 2024
- 3 min read
Besides the habitual, phony lamentations, and pious "thoughts & prayers" extended, this latest deadly school shooting in Georgia - otherwise a key swing state in the upcoming presidential race - will NOT elicit much attention from either presidential campaign. Odd, no?
Why do you think this is?
Well, let me humbly suggest TWO reasons for this:
(1) We can fully expect Trump's habitual NRA-honed state of denialism in display, on the one hand, and Harris's recent deliberate pivot to the right, too, on the other (she'll probably take it as an opportunity to sound "tough" and call on the "full prosecution" of the 14-year-old shooter and his dad!) This reason is appalling on both counts, but superficial.
(2) A deeper explanation, most crucial for the Trump campaign, is that the shooter did NOT turn out to be a Latino or Asian immigrant, or a Muslim, or Black, or a transgender/gay person, but just another mentally-disturbed local WHITE teenager with easy access to his dad's assault weaponry.
In those other possible communities of origin for the mass killer there is now, as in most previous similar occasions, a BIG SIGH OF RELIEF!!!
You will remember that recently, after another local WHITE TEENAGER razed Trump's ear and killed two bystanders at an outdoor rally in Pennsylvania last July, the Dems merely sent their best wishes to Trump and "thoughts & prayers" to the victims' families, while Trump's campaign quickly spun the incident as a tale of "being saved by the Lord's intervention"... BUT NO OUTRAGE at the shooter or his community of origin, no talk of a "crime wave" due to "open borders" or the "invasion" of "murderers" and "terrorists" threatening the nation.
Had the shooter been from any of the above described communities, we all know the Trump campaign would have immediately gone on a massive, non-stop, demonization campaign of the shooter's identity and community. New draconian bills would have been introduced in Congress, the hysterics would have been amped up by many decibels.
But the duopoly's predictable SILENCE that will soon follow this incident - especially the GOP's conspicuous silence - is what most folks will assume normal or take for granted, now that the perpetrator of the school shooting has turned out to be another very young white guy.
This discrepancy of response is explained in social psychology by something called "Attribution theory," which essentially states that:
(a) All bad deeds committed by a high status group are attributed to individual causes ("bad apples"), whereas all good deeds are deemed as reflecting the very nature of such high status group - their normal mode;
(b) But the reverse mechanism is perversely used to explain the deeds of all low status groups: their individual bad behavior is deemed natural to the entire group they belong to ("they are all like that") while their good behavior is attributed to rare individual virtue ("exception to the rule") - or even to the largess and support of the high status groups ("affirmative action").
You cannot escape the iron logic of this asymmetrical attribution mechanism as long as you have a society with highly differentiated high status - who are glorified and celebrated and honored - coexisting with highly stigmatized low status groups - in a stratified, unequal society.
The question is then, not what explains good and bad behavior, but why do we not see how we attribute their causes in such opposite ways that reinforce inequality in our society, even when we all profess the same universal civic values, which we recite in the Pledge of Alliegance?
The answer to that riddle of invisibility is that the mechanism of opposite attribution of social behavior is deeply embedded into our mainstream culture and codified in many ways in our legal system and political behavior.
And to change that pervasive mechanism requires the collective resistance - and even rebellion - of those deemed "low status" - in the past slaves & Blacks, immigrants and gays, Asians and Latinos, women and transgender, the poor and disabled, etc.
A word on strategy: Allies in the "high status" groups, such that can be found, can greatly help in that struggle, which is a moral and social struggle, to equalize social status, solidarity has its place; but it is not a substitute to the self-reliance, self-mobilization, resolve, defiance, and militancy of the "low status" groups to NOT PUT UP WITH any undignified, unacceptable status any more!
They say that the greatest weapon of the oppressors are always the minds of the oppressed. Decolonize your minds and act!
This ends the teaching moment. Now go out and demand the duopoly BAN THOSE ASSAULT WEAPONS PERMANENTLY!