The Skin-Tone Scale Of Attention

[THUNDER HANDS]

1 White Woman's Death +/-

100,000+ Brown Iraqi Civilians +/-

1,000,000+ Blacks In Darfur.

Which is more newsworthy? Which do YOU care to talk about?

Which were you discussing over Easter dinner last weekend?

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Joseph Stalin was right. One death is a tragedy, but one million is a statistic. Or rather, one white death is a tragedy, one million non-white deaths is what comes on the news before the weather and the update on the water-skiing squirrel.

[Heidi]

1. Legal tender.

Once, out of curiosity, I rode the Greyhound bus from Gainesville, Florida, to Key West. Spent eight hours sitting next to a guy from OverTown, who informed me that my whiteness is legal tender, currency. I never before had believed I had traded on my skin color, but after listening to him for a while, I knew he was right, because the _result_ didn't care whether I'd done it intentionally or not. Intent counts for something, but the results tell all.

[BlueEyedSon]

2. 1/4 million yellow & brown in Tsunamiland

[Bombtrack]

3. And also one of the greatest comedians in a generation, isn't noteworthy

at all. It's complete bullshit. I don't think it's really as based on color tone as it is arbitrarity and what will hold people's attention spans and be drawn out for maximum bullshit exploitation.

What did that Weise kid kill, like a third of the number of people at Columbine? Maybe half?

Did it get a half or third of the media obsession Columbine got? No, nor should it. But it just shows how fucked up our media is when you compare the 2.

[Heidi]

4. That Weise kid . . .

was _very_ bright and could have had a great future if more of us had given half a sh!t about him. The sad thing was that he, a mixed race Indian, was deluded by the bullsh!t of race purity, on top of the 5 jillion other problems he had, not the least of which was multi-generational, government-enforced segregation.

[kk897]

5. I don't know...

It could be that the Weiss shooting hasn't gotten as much coverage simply because the people involved really aren't talking. Initially, I read that the reservation authorities and/or the FBI had kept the press at arm's length; the few people who did talk at first later clammed up. My guess is that, since the arrest of the tribe's chairman's son indicated others were involved, the investigation is still very much ongoing and they don't want to jeopardize it. The media weren't allowed to go into a frenzy.

Although, come to think of it, lack of solid information never stopped a media frenzy in the past... hmmmm...

You've got a great point. I *do* wish that at the very least the incident would have thrown a brighter spotlight on the problems that particular tribe face, as well as the problems others face. I think I saw just one article about that.

My special, super-secret conspiracy theory on this one is this: like Klebold and/or Harris, Weiss was taking Prozac, and with the recent studies showing that there's a connection between the 'zac and violent behavior in kids, they're keeping a lid on it so that they won't get sued out the wazoo.

[Bombtrack]

6. I really, really, don't think it had as much to do with race as you're

making it out to be. He was in a living hell. His parents were either dead or in dibilitated states, and neither particularly cared about him before they came to their violent ends of their relative lives. He was fat, awkward and unpopular at the worst possible age you can be those things. Chicks didn't like him. He almost certainly self medicated with drugs, which pretty much always puts a person further down the spiral. He wasn't even going to school for christ sake.

So he ended up latching onto bullshit propaganda on the net that angry, hopeless, ignorant people get attracted to. And often kids who are victems of societal neglect believe they can overcome their torment through violent attitudes. The "coolness" of violence is something they can emulate and do. And he had access to firearms.