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Scapegoating "the Losers"
"The media has to
rationalize why an otherwise 'normal' middle class white boy would do
something crazy."
By Sophia Chakos-Lieby
 After the recent high school shooting in the suburban city
of Santee, the media pounced on the story — though not as
vigorously as previous incidents like Columbine. Major newspapers such
as the NewYork Times and the San Francisco Chronicle took the same angle
they used for other school shootings, only this time, instead of
portraying the shooter as a goth sitting alone in the back of a
classroom, the N.Y. Times subtly blamed his violent streak on a
different kind of social group. They described his friends as jobless
homeless youth from the wrong side of the tracks - youth who sat in a
park nearby the school and took pride in stealing vodka from the local
Albertsons.
I guess these "loser" kids that the N.Y. Times described were
supposed to be a California version of the goth. According to the
mainstream media, both hold the same low morals and hardened sense of
reality that makes murder acceptable. I hate the way the media keeps
trying to place blame on the social group that the shooter comes from.
They never fail to point out that the shooter was associated with goths
(or in this case, skaters), who aren't straight A students or members of
a varsity sports team.
I agree that reporters need to describe
social information because friends do have a big effect on people's
personality and actions, but they slant and demonize these groups too
much. I feel like the mainstream media is too afraid to search deeply
into the problems of our society. They want a quick and easy answer to
explain why someone would go kill their classmates. So why not blame it
on lack of gun control … or video games … or friends?
The media has to rationalize why an otherwise "normal" middle
class white boy would do something crazy. So they analyze his friends,
they tear apart his clothing style - all the time looking for evidence
that he doesn't really conform to normal standards. Of course, the media
doesn't turn a head when a black kid gets shot in South Central.
Society has already analyzed and stereotyped African-American males as
people with higher violence rates.
For once, I'd like to agree
with Eminem. In his latest album, the Marshall Mathers L.P., he
gets a good message across. The message goes something like this: The
inner cities are exposed to violence everyday and no one notices - but
when the same type of violence occurs in a small, middle class
environment, the media immediately swoops in and plays the story up as
an outcome of a youth trend toward violence.
Why is it that
every time someone gets shot in a middle class white neighborhood
everyone cries and berates social values, but when a drive-by occurs in
a poor, minority community nobody knows? It is disgusting to think that
we expect and accept violence in lower economy neighborhoods and find
violence intolerable in a middle class community. This assumption
promotes prejudice. The attention that the media gives to the moneyed
communities and lack of attention in poor communities implies that those
at an economic disadvantage are prone to violence and dysfunction so
it's not a tragedy when they shoot each other.
So we think, what
is society coming to? A well-off white male, who is supposed to be
stable, does something crazy and our country is falling to pieces and
there's something wrong with all the video games. I think we need to
look beyond labels and classifications; we must ignore our
pre-conceptions of how certain people act and react. Obviously, such
stereotypes don't hold true.
Random acts of gruesome violence
happen in any kind of community. The media should wake up and recognize
this - and stop criticizing counter cultures, like goths and skaters,
just because a white guy does something crazy.
— Sophia
Chakos-Lieby is a 17-year-old senior at Berkeley High. She plans on
graduating in June.
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