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And yet the news reports I've heard on the shooting in Charleston kept mentioning "9 African Americans". No one calls the "white" folks (that would probably be

by malkia 11y ago

And yet the news reports I've heard on the shooting in Charleston kept mentioning "9 African Americans". No one calls the "white" folks (that would probably be me) "European Americans" or "Caucasian Americans" in the reports. It's just silly.

sarciszewski 11y ago
Isn't that just presumptuous? "All black people trace their immediate ancestry (past 400 or so years) from Africa." Nevermind that black people also come from: Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Thailand, etc.
- mc32 11y ago
  But when say the victims of a violent crime are all white, the news don't typically say things like 'all five white victims were....' They just say all five victims were...' and whatever dependent clause.
  - crough 11y ago
    I mean, Charleston was about race though. He was targeting black people. I don't think it applies, there.
    - sarciszewski 11y ago
      But semantics!
  - scott_karana 11y ago
    Here's the difference: > Five statistically unlikely people have been shot simultaneously > Five statistically common people have been shot simultaneously To say nothing of the killer's explicitly stated racial motives, historical repression, slavery, curtailing of rights, violence, et cetera. :P See also, "man bites dog". If the shooting had been in a predominantly non-white society, the headline could well have been what you proposed.
    - mc32 11y ago
      I understand. I also understand that most media actively try to censor race from most crime reportage. They'll say something like "two males were seen fleeing in a car at high speed after the shooting". Why even say males at this point? Just say people. So, on the one hand they avoid mentioning physical descriptors like race, or age, for most violent crimes, on others, they actively highlight physical and psychological characteristics like race and mental health, and assumed bigotry. So it's a very uneven treatment. Also, statistics are unhelpful here. Overall whites are a maj. in the U.S. They may or may not be in the locale where the crime happened, and minorities may or may not be a majority in the place a crime happened. So it very much depends how large you want to make this "place"
jbattle 11y ago
Right - it's another manifestation of the subtle and pervasive racism in our society. It/we conceptualize and talk about whites as the "normal" ones, the default, and everyone else as not-normal.
malkia 11y ago
I see some fair points in here. It's possible that what I've heard was influenced by the recent findings of the shooter. But I'm just so pissed, because in my country (Bulgaria) the roma (gypsy) population are always treated (by the media, and unfortunately a lot of people I know) as non-bulgarians, non-citizens, even non-people by some.

by malkia 11y ago

sarciszewski 11y ago

Isn't that just presumptuous? "All black people trace their immediate ancestry (past 400 or so years) from Africa." Nevermind that black people also come from: Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Thailand, etc.

mc32 11y ago
But when say the victims of a violent crime are all white, the news don't typically say things like 'all five white victims were....' They just say all five victims were...' and whatever dependent clause.
- crough 11y ago
  I mean, Charleston was about race though. He was targeting black people. I don't think it applies, there.
  - sarciszewski 11y ago
    But semantics!
- scott_karana 11y ago
  Here's the difference: > Five statistically unlikely people have been shot simultaneously > Five statistically common people have been shot simultaneously To say nothing of the killer's explicitly stated racial motives, historical repression, slavery, curtailing of rights, violence, et cetera. :P See also, "man bites dog". If the shooting had been in a predominantly non-white society, the headline could well have been what you proposed.
  - mc32 11y ago
    I understand. I also understand that most media actively try to censor race from most crime reportage. They'll say something like "two males were seen fleeing in a car at high speed after the shooting". Why even say males at this point? Just say people. So, on the one hand they avoid mentioning physical descriptors like race, or age, for most violent crimes, on others, they actively highlight physical and psychological characteristics like race and mental health, and assumed bigotry. So it's a very uneven treatment. Also, statistics are unhelpful here. Overall whites are a maj. in the U.S. They may or may not be in the locale where the crime happened, and minorities may or may not be a majority in the place a crime happened. So it very much depends how large you want to make this "place"

jbattle 11y ago

Right - it's another manifestation of the subtle and pervasive racism in our society. It/we conceptualize and talk about whites as the "normal" ones, the default, and everyone else as not-normal.

malkia 11y ago

I see some fair points in here. It's possible that what I've heard was influenced by the recent findings of the shooter. But I'm just so pissed, because in my country (Bulgaria) the roma (gypsy) population are always treated (by the media, and unfortunately a lot of people I know) as non-bulgarians, non-citizens, even non-people by some.