And Now… ‘Time to Profile White Men?’
December 20th, 2012Via: Salon:
Yesterday, during a cable news discussion of gun violence and the Newtown school shooting, I dared mention a taboo truism. During a conversation on MSNBC’s “Up With Chris Hayes,” I said that because most of the mass shootings in America come at the hands of white men, there would likely be political opposition to initiatives that propose to use those facts to profile the demographic group to which these killers belong. I suggested that’s the case because as opposed to people of color or, say, Muslims, white men as a subgroup are in such a privileged position in our society that they are the one group that our political system avoids demographically profiling or analytically aggregating in any real way. Indeed, unlike other demographic, white guys as a group are never thought to be an acceptable topic for any kind of critical discussion whatsoever, even when there is ample reason to open up such a discussion.
Research Credit: TB
Bankers and Wall Street already beat them to it.
Study Reveals Top Ten Violence-Inducing Prescription Drugs [– Eight Are Psychiatric Drugs]
http://psychiatricfraud.org/2011/01/study-reveals-top-ten-violence-inducing-prescription-drugs-%E2%80%93-eight-are-psychiatric-drugs/
The role of anti-depressants in mass killings
http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2012/12/the-role-of-anti-depressants-in-mass-killings/
After reading the first paragraph of the article I didn’t even question whether it was true that the majority of mass killers were white. I was about ready to read the article and see what the author had to say about it.
But then I looked at the link[1] he provided to back that fact up, and it has 44 of 63 mass shootings perpetrated by white males. That’s roughly 70%. Given that whites are about 60% of the population that’s not really an overwhelming divergence. I’d go so far as to say it’s a mostly negligible difference.
Now he did say “white males”, and so technically adding in the male specifier makes it more like 30% of the population. But given that there’s only been one female mass shooter (according to that source) I think it would be more poignant to say “Time to profile Men?”. And really that holds true for any violent crime so it’s not like that’s an enlightening fact.
So I didn’t read the article any further than that. I suppose journalists have been misrepresenting statistics to get a reaction for a long time. But not from me.
[1]http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map
After checking wikipedia it appears even I’m wrong, from the 2010 census it’s about 70% of Americans that are white. So it’s basically directly proportional.
In fact after looking through the list of mass shooters it appears that it’s Asians who are disproportionally higher than the rest.
Still don’t think that means anything.