“Rush To The Defense? Not So Fast”: We Know Where Limbaugh Stands Today
Dear David from Georgia:
I want to thank you for the email you sent last week. It made me laugh out loud.
It seems you were unhappy I took a shot at Rush Limbaugh a few days back. Limbaugh had argued that John Lewis might have avoided having his skull fractured by Alabama state troopers while protesting for voting rights in Selma, AL 48 years ago, if only he’d been armed. I suggested, tongue in cheek, that Limbaugh would have given the same advice to Rosa Parks, who famously refused to surrender her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, AL, bus.
Which moved you to write: “If Rush Limbaugh were on that bus that day, like so many of us, he would have insisted that Ms. Parks REMAIN seated. … Rush doesn’t need me to defend him from your silly assumption, but I just like to bring it to your attention that just because Rush is WHITE doesn’t mean he is not a gentleman!”
Ahem.
David, Rush Limbaugh is the man who once said the NFL “all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips” and told a black caller to “take that bone out of your nose and call me back.” So the idea that, in Alabama, in 1955, as a black woman was committing an illegal act of civil disobedience, this particular white man would have done what 14 other white passengers did not is, well, rather fanciful.
But then, it’s seductively easy to imagine yourself or your hero on the right side of history once that history has been vindicated. So of course “Rush” would have stood up for Rosa Parks. Of course “Rush” would have defended Jews who were turned away while fleeing the Holocaust. Of course “Rush” would have supported women agitating for the right to vote. Of course he would’ve defended human rights. Wouldn’t we all?
Actually, no. Not then, and not now.
As it happens, David, your email appeared the same week as news out of Flint, MI, about Tonya Battle, an African-American nurse who is suing her employer, the Hurley Medical Center. Battle, an employee since 1988, was working in the neonatal intensive-care unit when, she says, a baby’s father approached her at the infant’s bedside, asked for her supervisor and then told said supervisor he didn’t want any black people involved in his child’s care.
So, of course, the hospital stood up for its 25-year employee, right?
No. According to her suit, a note was posted on the assignment clipboard saying, “No African-American nurse to take care of baby.” The hospital, naturally, has declined comment.
David, this is ultimately not about “Rush.” He is a rich blowhard and therefore, unexceptional. No, this is about the implicit, albeit unstated, “of course” that comes too easily to you and frankly, to many of us, when we contemplate how we would have responded to the moral crimes of the past.
There is to it an unearned smugness that insults the very real courage of those like Medgar Evers, Viola Liuzzo and James Zwerg, who did take the morally correct stand at hazard of life and limb. It is easy to “stand up” for the right thing when doing so requires only paying lip service 50 years after the fact, something at which Limbaugh and his brethren have become scarily adept.
But the need for real courage, for willingness to stand up for human dignity, did not end in 1955, something to which our gay, Muslim and immigrant friends — and Tonya Battle — would surely testify. So there is something starkly fatuous in your vision of “Rush” defending Rosa Parks. No, sir. We know where he would have stood then because we know where he stands now.
Perhaps you find comfort in your delusion. But some of us realize we live in an era where bigotry has its own talk show and cable network. Can we find comfort in delusions like yours?
Of course not.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., The National Memo. February 20, 2013
“Don’t Mythologize Christopher Dorner”: The Right Sentiment, Condolences For The Victims, Condemnation Of His Actions
I am no stranger to people’s glomming on to deadly criminals and celebrating them as heroes. Bonnie and Clyde were killed just south of the town where I grew up. There was that movie made about the couple, as well as a musical and more songs that I can count. And every year the town celebrates the duo and their killing with a festival and a shootout.
Last year, one Web site promoting the festival read: “Bring your family and friends and join us each year as we remember the historical ambush of the infamous outlaws Bonnie & Clyde, with fun festivities, great food, music and authentic re-enactments.”
But as romantic as people try to make the criminal couple and the circumstances of their death, they still can’t erase the wrong the duo did.
The same is true for Christopher Dorner — the former Los Angeles police officer and fugitive accused of killing several people, including one police officer and a sheriff’s deputy — who died this week in a cabin fire while on the run.
A rambling manifesto Dorner issued had many gripes, but chief among them were that racism, abuse of power and corruption ran rampant in the Los Angeles Police Department and that he had been fired for reporting it.
Now Dorner is being compared to movie heroes, has a song written about him and has a long list of fan pages on Facebook.
But make no mistake: Christopher Dorner is no hero. Here are some of the other things in Dorner’s manifesto.
He says of his planned attacks on other officers:
“The attacks will stop when the department states the truth about my innocence, PUBLICLY!!!”
He threatened that he would “use the element of surprise where you work, live, eat and sleep,” and discover the officers’ “residences, spouses workplaces, and children’s schools.”
He continued: “To those children of the officers who are eradicated, your parent was not the individual you thought they were.”
Through his own words, Dorner forfeits any aspiration to the title of hero.
Some commentators have tried valiantly to thread an impossibly small needle in separating what Dorner did, which all people of good conscience despise, from the serious issues he raises.
Marc Lamont Hill, a Columbia University professor, said on CNN:
“This has been an important public conversation that we’ve had about police brutality, about police corruption, about state violence. I mean there were even talks about making him the first domestic drone target. This is serious business here.”
Hill continued:
“I don’t think it’s been a waste of time at all. And as far as Dorner himself goes, he’s been like a real life superhero to many people. Now don’t get me wrong. What he did was awful, killing innocent people was bad, but when you read his manifesto, when you read the message that he left, he wasn’t entirely crazy. He had a plan and a mission here. And many people aren’t rooting for him to kill innocent people. They are rooting for somebody who was wronged to get a kind of revenge against the system. It’s almost like watching ‘Django Unchained’ in real life. It’s kind of exciting.”
I agree that the issues of police brutality and corruption should now and always be part of the conversation, particularly when discussing police departments with a bad history when it comes to minority and other vulnerable communities.
But I do not see a need to explain why people — particularly many on social media — are mythologizing Dorner. Rooting for a suspected killer who makes threats against even more innocent people and their families is just horrendous. It’s not exciting; it’s revolting.
Hill later apologized for his choice of words. I applaud him for doing that.
Still, too many people online have portrayed Dorner’s actions as righteous retribution. But nothing can change the fact that those actions are wrong.
Fighting for justice is noble. Spilling innocent blood is the ultimate act of cowardice. Dorner is not the right emblem for those wronged by the system.
This is not a game or a movie. This is about real people who lead real lives and their real families who dug real graves. Let’s give everyone involved time to mourn. Let’s have the respect to not honor the person believed to be responsible for the mourning.
According to KTLA in Los Angeles, Dorner’s mother issued a statement that read in part: “It is with great sadness and heavy hearts that we express our deepest sympathies and condolences to anyone that suffered losses or injuries resulting from Christopher’s actions.” They said it continued: “We do not condone Christopher’s actions.”
That’s the right sentiment: condolences for the victims and condemnation of Dorner’s actions. Period.
By: Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, February 15, 2013
“The Madness Of Wayne LaPierre”: Will NRA Members Suffer The Consequences Of His Racism And Paranoia?
If you’re looking for a sure fire recipe to boost gun sales, there’s nothing like putting a heavy dose of paranoia, along with a large dollop of racist fear mongering, into the atmosphere to get the job done—and NRA honcho Wayne LaPierre has certainly done his part.
In an op-ed published Wednesday by The Daily Caller , LaPierre twisted more than a few facts while arguing that the world is hell and attempting to navigate your way through it without a semi-automatic weapon at your side can only be perceived as sheer madness.
However, the true madness would appear to rest within the mind of Wayne LaPierre.
To make his central point that guns are a must in this terrifying inferno we call America, LaPierre treats us to the following—
“During the second Obama term, however, additional threats are growing. Latin American drug gangs have invaded every city of significant size in the United States. Phoenix is already one of the kidnapping capitals of the world, and though the states on the U.S./Mexico border may be the first places in the nation to suffer from cartel violence, by no means are they the last.”
While there is much in that paragraph to respond to, my attention was particularly grabbed by LaPierre’s effort to raise the specter of kidnapping run amuck, knowing full well that nothing frightens people more than the image of someone coming into their home and taking away a loved one. It is an effective use of imagery—despite being wholly dishonest in its use—that makes a meaningful contribution to both the art of fear mongering and spreading apprehension through the employment of racial stereotyping.
While it is absolutely true that there has been an unusually high number of kidnappings in the city of Phoenix, things are not exactly as LaPierre would have us believe.
In 2008, when Phoenix was experiencing the peak of its kidnapping troubles, Mark Spencer—head of the union that represents more than 2,500 Phoenix police officers—noted, “In the past year, there were 359 kidnappings in Phoenix, and not one was legitimate involving a truly innocent victim…”
In other words, the kidnappings were not the result of a scenario where bad guys were invading the homes of the good guys and stealing away their children. Rather, these were bad guys in a battle with other bad guys—bad guys whom Mr. LaPierre apparently wants to ensure are adequately armed so that they can defend themselves in the internal wars that occur in the business of illegal immigration.
This is like arguing in an op-ed piece that the public has an interest in insuring that the Bugs Moran Gang be better armed so that they can more effectively protect themselves from the attacks of Al Capone.
And then there is this paragraph from Mr. LaPierre’s piece—
“After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia. Looters ran wild in south Brooklyn. There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all.”
Pretty scary, yes?
The problem is that LaPierre’s hellish, New York City landscape doesn’t quite jive with the actual data.
From the New York Daily News—
“Murders citywide dropped 86% from Monday, when the hurricane hit, to Friday, compared with the same time frame in 2011, NYPD statistics show. The city has also seen a slump in robberies. There were 211 this past week, compared with 303 in the same block of days last year – a 30% decline. Grand larcenies are down 48%, auto thefts are down 24% and felony assaults dropped 31%, department figures show.”
Because there was some looting in certain areas of the city where store fronts were ripped wide open, there were 271 burglaries in the five-day period following the storm compared to 267 the previous year.
Not exactly the scene straight out of hell as described by Wayne LaPierre nor one that warranted New Yorkers locking and loading en masse to deal with the horrors that enveloped them.
The paranoid op-ed piece goes downhill from there in a tone that resembles something more akin to what one might expect to be the manifesto of a madman holed up in a cabin in the woods planning to wreak his revenge on a dangerous world that just doesn’t understand him. It certainly is not the sort of rationally constructed editorial that one would hope to find in a credible publication.
Make no mistake. I fully appreciate and acknowledge the desires and concerns of Americans—and everyone else in the world—when it comes to protecting their homes and families. And if owning a firearm is what an individual believes is required to accomplish that protection, such is his or her right.
I also acknowledge that my own opinion on gun ownership is largely without relevance as it is the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution that gives Americans their rights in this regard, subject to legal and legitimate restrictions that may be placed on such ownership, and most certainly not my thoughts on the topic. The Supreme Court has made the parameters of gun ownership more than clear—and those parameters are fairly expansive.
What I do not appreciate—nor should any American appreciate—is LaPierre’s efforts to spread fear and racism under the guise of protecting the 2nd Amendment when all he is really doing is playing the part the gun manufacturers have assigned him as they seek to perpetuate the gold rush that has produced record-setting gun sales in the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook.
Wayne LaPierre knows that no matter how many times he says it —or what method he may choose to scare the wits out of those who might become customers for the gun makers—there is not a shred of evidence that President Obama—or anyone else in the federal government who has anything to say about it—has any interest in ‘taking away the guns’.
Wayne LaPierre knows that even if there were a glimmer of expectation on the part of anyone with the power to ‘take away the guns’ that they could do so, it is a virtual impossibility given that the Supreme Court has well established an American’s right to own a firearm. The only way this happens is a complete rejection of the law of the land by our government, something LaPierre apparently does not fear as he notes in his op-ed piece, “Gun owners are not buying firearms because they anticipate a confrontation with the government. Rather, we anticipate confrontations where the government isn’t there—or simply doesn’t show up in time.”
Do you know what else Wayne LaPierre knows?
He knows that the only legislation moving through Congress is limited to banning the sale of certain semi-automatic weapons (not taking away any that are currently owned) just as he knows that this legislation has absolutely no chance of passing.
LaPierre also knows that the only possible changes we may see in gun laws will involve increased background checks for potential gun purchasers—a move that is widely supported not only by an overwhelming number of Americans but by a large majority of those who form the membership of the NRA. He knows this because he can read the polls as easily as I can—polls that leave little room for doubt.
A recent Quinnipiac Poll found that 92 percent of Americans support background checks for all gun buyers, including 91 percent of those living in homes with a gun. The January, 2013 Pew survey reports 85 percent of Americans—and 85 percent of gun owners—want all private gun sales and sales at gun shows to be subject to background checks. The CBS/New York Times poll conducted in January, 2013 had similar results, showing that 92 percent of Americans, including 85 percent of those living in a household with an NRA member, are in favor of universal background checks.
But Wayne LaPierre doesn’t care because background checks are bad for business—And Mr. LaPierre is all about the business of selling guns.
Despite knowing all these things, LaPierre could not resist spreading his message of fear with undertones of racism even in the face of knowing that the membership of the NRA will end up having no beef with the likely legislative outcome of our most recent discussion on guns.
Of course, there may be another explanation for LaPierre’s despicable behavior.
Maybe he is no longer capable of grasping these bits of information and demonstrations of reality because he’s been at this so long that he no longer can deal with facts and realities. Maybe all Wayne LaPierre has left is his hellish vision of his country.
Either way, LaPierre has become a liability to the membership of the National Rifle Association.
Gun owners have every interest in protecting the rights granted us all by the 2nd Amendment. But doing so by spreading fear, xenophobia and racial hatred is not going to get the job done and will only serve to hurt the members of the NRA in the long run. While the NRA is today one of the most effective lobbying organizations in America—if not the most effective—they now risk seeing their powers stripped away by LaPierre’s decision to lead the organization down the path of racism and paranoia rather than standing up for what the organization was intended to be—a place for gun owners to come together to sensibly and rationally protect and defend their Second Amendment rights.
While much of the media focus today is centered around the damage LaPierre is doing to the Republicans—the political party long viewed as the primary political ally of the NRA—if I were a NRA member, my concern would not be for the GOP but for the continued viability of my own organization.
If the NRA allows LaPierre to continue as their leader, they may well be writing the script for their own demise.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, February 14, 2013
“A Dangerous Demagogic Figure”: Ted Nugent Is An Eloquent Spokesman, For Democrats
Yesterday rocker Ted Nugent announced that he would attend President Obama’s State of the Union speech — and then hold a press conference afterward to comment.
Nugent will attend at the invitation of Republican Congressman Steve Stockman of Texas. But the message he sends is toxic for the Republican Party.
Ted Nugent is a board member of the NRA — and an avid spokesman for the right of every American to buy, carry and use military style weapons. Graciously, he will arrive at the capitol without military style weapons. He told the New York Times he would “go in at least 20 pounds lighter than I normally walk,” … “I will be going in sans the hardware store on my belt. I live a well-armed life, and I’ve got to demilitarize before I go.”
He will be attending the State of the Union speech along with 100 relatives of the victims of gun violence invited mainly by Democratic Members of Congress and sponsored by Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Among them will be former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords who was almost killed in a gun attack in Tucson.
The contrast could not be starker. During last year’s Presidential campaign Nugent said:
“If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”
In 2007 he said:
“I think that Barack Hussein Obama should be put in jail. It is clear that Barack Hussein Obama is a communist. Mao Tse Tung lives and his name is Barack Hussein Obama. This country should be ashamed. I wanna throw up,” he said, adding “Obama, he’s a piece of s**t. I told him to suck on my machine gun.”
As for his view of women:
“Obama, he’s a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun. Hey Hillary,” he continued. “You might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch.”
“What’s a feminist anyways? A fat pig who doesn’t get it often enough?”
In a 1994 Rolling Stone interview Nugent said:
“You probably can’t use the term `toxic c**t’ in your magazine, but that’s what she is. Her very existence insults the spirit of individualism in this country. This bitch is nothing but a two-bit whore for Fidel Castro.”
On Asians and “foreigners” in general:
“…Yeah they love me (in Japan) — they’re still assholes. These people they don’t know what life is. I don’t have a following, they need me; they don’t like me they need me… Foreigners are a******s; foreigners are scum; I don’t like ’em; I don’t want ’em in this country; I don’t want ’em selling me doughnuts; I don’t want ’em pumping my gas; I don’t want ’em downwind of my life-OK? So anyhow, and I’m dead serious…”
And then there are his comments on race:
“My being there (South Africa) isn’t going to affect any political structure. Besides, apartheid isn’t that cut-and-dry. All men are not created equal.”
“I use the word n****r a lot because I hang around with a lot of n****rs, and they use the word n****r, and I tend to use words that communicate,” he said.
Let’s just say that Ted Nugent is not the face of the new Republican Party “brand” that many Republican leaders have been trying so desperately to project since their November election disaster.
Nugent presents the same problem for Republicans as Todd Aiken did when he explained how the female body shut down pregnancies that resulted from “legitimate rape.” Even though many Republicans don’t entirely agree with people like Nugent and Aiken, their comments are toxic for the Republican Party brand. They drive away women, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, young people.
And when it comes to the issue of gun violence, who would you rather have as your spokesperson, Gabby Giffords or Ted Nugent? Which of these two do you think would poll more favorably among the vast majority of Americans?
Nugent’s mouth is like a machine gun that riddles his own troops with friendly fire. The problem is that it is very hard for the Republican establishment to stop people like Nugent and Aiken. In fact tonight, we will be treated not only to the traditional Republican response to the State of the Union address — but two additional Republican responses: one by Tea Party Senator Rand Paul and the other by ultra-extremist Ted Nugent.
From Nugent’s point of view, it makes perfect sense to grandstand at the State of the Union and to go around making violent, outrageous statements. It drives his popularity and visibility among the narrow strata of the population that share his point of view — his fan base.
Recently the NRA posted a video that criticized the President for having tougher security for his children than ordinary people have for their kid’s schools. Most people thought the commercial was over the top — that bringing the President’s children into the political debate was out-of-bounds — and was ineffective in moving persuadable voters.
But that wasn’t the point. The video was not intended to persuade. It was intended as red meat for NRA supporters. It was intended to recruit members, raise money and mobilize the NRA’s base.
And that is the Republican problem — with the gun violence issue and so many others.
Tea Party activists have every incentive to stoke the anger of their base, make outrageous statements, and mount primary challenges that drive the Party out of the country’s mainstream — even though those actions simultaneously weaken the attractiveness of Republican Party candidates in general elections. And worse yet for the Republicans, those actions destroy their chances of attracting young people who will determine the Party’s future.
In the near term, people like Ted Nugent are dangerous to a Democratic society. Ted Nugent is a hateful, demagogic figure that builds his own career by belittling and attacking others. In hard times, his scapegoating and racism can find a following.
But every time Nugent opens his mouth he also helps to create lifelong Progressives who would never dream of being associated with the hatred he espouses — or with the political party that countenances him.
The Republican establishment funded and fueled the revival of the Tea Party after Barack Obama was elected. They did everything they could to legitimate otherwise fringe points of view. Now they are paying the price.
What is it they say about riding the tiger? The odds are good that you might be consumed by it. Or in the case of Nugent perhaps the better analogy would be a mountain lion. Nugent was once quoted saying:
“Vegetarians are cool. All I eat are vegetarians — except for the occasional mountain lion steak.”
By: Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post, February 12, 2013
“The Militarization Of School Safety”: Race, Gun Control And Unintended Consequences
Vice President Joe Biden’s task force on gun control handed its recommendations to President Obama yesterday, who will announce them tomorrow. This is the first time in recent memory that one of our increasingly common acts of mass violence has sparked such immediate action. It may not bring solace to all of the victims’ families, but it has the potential to start preventing these horrors from happening in the first place.
But as encouraging as it is to see action to curb gun violence, an epidemic in this country compared to our peers, it is still worth pausing to ask what kind of action is being taken and what its consequences will be. Some reforms, like the “guns in every school” approach from the NRA, rightly strike many liberals as absurd. This direction is not just dangerous—it also will likely disproportionately impact the lives of young black and brown children. But other gun control measures that we might feel more comfortable with could have similar unintended consequences if we don’t pay attention to how they are implemented.
Few can forget the absurd news conference held by the NRA in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in which NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre called for putting “armed police officers in every school in this nation.” But it’s not as out-of-box as many of us might assume. Some lawmakers have echoed this call; Senator Barbara Boxer introduced legislation that would let governors use federal funds to have the National Guard secure schools and increase the money spent annually on things like metal detectors and security cameras at schools. But many schools already have armed policemen patrolling the halls and using these law enforcement gadgets. As Julianne Hing of Colorlines reports:
As of 2011, 68 percent of U.S. schoolchildren said police officers patrolled their school campuses… In 1999, that number was 54 percent. Last year, 70 percent of schoolkids went to schools where surveillance cameras were used, and more than half of students reported that locker checks were used as a security tactic. More than one in 10 U.S. students goes to a school with metal detectors on campus.
The militarization of school safety and orderliness most heavily impacts children of color. It effectively feeds the school-to-prison pipeline. Hing notes, “The rise of police officers and militarized security tactics in schools runs parallel with the rise of zero-tolerance school discipline policies in the 1980s and 1990s.” Those zero tolerance laws entail cracking down on behavior infractions with a heavy fist. As Jim Eichner of the Advancement Project told Hing, “What we know is that when you put police in school they arrest kids,” which means students going to jail for things like fist fights, talking back to teachers or even showing up late or wearing the wrong color socks.
The heavy fist doesn’t fall evenly. One study showed that black boys are three times more likely to be suspended than white boys and black girls were four times more likely than white girls. Studies have shown that if young children come into contact with the criminal justice system, that’s likely only the first time.
But the misguided idea that good teachers with guns will stop bad guys with guns is not the only possible gun control measure that could negatively impact people of color. The more restrictive gun control laws about to be passed in New York, for example, expand the number of assault weapons that will be banned in the state. Biden’s task force is likely to also push for an assault weapon ban. The evidence does seem pretty clear that fewer guns lead to less violence. But we can’t forget about the impact expanded criminalization could have as it’s implemented. The founder of Prison Culture, a blog focused on eradicating youth incarceration, took to Twitter shortly after the Sandy Hook shooting to warn against this problem. “I live in a city where black and brown kids some of whom I work with are currently locked up on ‘gun charges.’ These laws disproportionately impact and target the ‘usual suspects’ which happen to be the archetype ‘criminalblackman.’ As long our criminal legal system is racist and classist and heterosexist, it will be the marginalized who will be locked up,” the user said over a number of tweets. After all, as my Nation colleague Rick Perlstein explained last week, it was fear of gun-toting Black Panthers that led to some of the first strict gun control laws.
To understand the racist underbelly of our justice system, look no further than the extreme example of the War on Drugs. As Michelle Alexander writes in The New Jim Crow, despite similar drug use rates, “African Americans constitute 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison. In at least fifteen states, blacks are admitted to prison on drug charges at a rate from twenty to fifty-seven times greater than that of white men.” Meanwhile, the majority of dealers and sellers are white. (Everyone should read the whole book to get the full picture.) What may look like a colorblind law on the books can be interpreted and implemented in incredibly racist ways. So while it’s absolutely necessary that we pass laws that restrict the number and types of guns that are lawfully available, we also have to pay attention to whether those rules are fairly and evenly enforced.
We’ve seen the ways that gun control gets tied up in a ramped up police state before. The last time there was a significant push on gun control (also helmed by Joe Biden), back in 1994, an assault weapon ban was included in a comprehensive crime package. That package also included an expansion of the death penalty, the building of more prisons and the authorization of 100,000 more police officers. These are all policies that target people of color. African-Americans make up 12 percent of the population but 40 percent of death row inmates and one in three of those executed since 1977. African-Americans and Hispanics make up about a quarter of the population but nearly 60 percent of all prisoners.
As we continue to debate guns in this country, it’s also worth remembering who is the victim of this violence and who is the face of rising mass murders. As David Cole writes in The New York Times, “young black men die of gun homicide at a rate eight times that of young white men.” He gives the examples of Chicago, where African-Americans are 33 percent of the population yet 70 percent of the murder victims, and Philadelphia, where three quarters of the victims of gun violence were black. Meanwhile, the faces of those who go on shooting rampages are almost all white and male. Forty-four of the killers in the sixty-two mass shootings since 1982 were white males, according to Mother Jones. This entire issue, from causes to consequences, is steeped in race. To pretend otherwise is farce. To ignore how our actions play out in this context risks disproportionately harming those who are already affected by violence.
By: Bryce Covert, The Nation, January 15, 2013
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