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Genders 29 1999
The Racial Double Standard
By J. ELYSE SINGLETON
[1] Close your eyes and imagine: There is a group of kids at school.
They threaten other students, play war games on campus, revel in violent
imagery, boast of multiple weapon ownership, respond to special phrases
and symbols and all wear clothing of the same type and color. Now take
this pop quiz: A crowd like that should be identified as -- a) the
French Club turned militant, b) a splinter group from the "Up With
People" organization renamed "People Suck," c) a gang.
[2] This is an elementary test administration, and security personnel at Littleton's Columbine High School
failed badly. That prompts me to
close my eyes and try to imagine the same surly group, only this time I
envision them as black or Hispanic. There is no way on earth they, like
the so-called Trench Coat Mafia, would not have been considered a gang.
Teachers and students wouldn't have dismissed them as quirky
individualists, unpleasant but harmless. In fact, dismissal would have
taken place only in the form of their darker-skinned tails being
dismissed right off that upscale suburban campus. But in this case a
double standard boomeranged with horrific consequences.
[3] Devastating reports of children hunted and executed, many at random
and at least one young man because he was black, turned watching the
evening news into vicarious victimization. Kids who survived served as
roughed-up reminders of those who didn't. Sobs of grateful parents
being re-united with traumatized children echoed the anticipated cries
of mothers and fathers who would lose this hellish game of reverse
musical chairs. For them, a chair would be empty at dinner as the dark
day darkened with unidentified bodies still inside the school. By 10
p.m. having an unaccounted-for child had to mean their worst fears had
risen up as flesh and reality.
[4] A night-shift technician friend said many of her Downtown
co-workers, depressed, left early. "You can feel it in the streets,"
she said. "People are just sick."
[5] I woke up in my safe, quiet apartment the morning after feeling that
I'd been emotionally manhandled. Perhaps we all were. What happened
was catastrophic -- but not inevitable.
[6] Columbine's staff couldn't see the trench coats for the trees. Logic
appears to have gotten lost in a forest of stereotypes and
complacency. The booby-trapped, danger-layered carcass of the high
school as it stood in the tragedy 's aftermath could have stood for the
layers of assumptions that tragically collapsed upon themselves Tuesday
morning.
[7] Shock and disbelief in the early wave of exclamations from teachers
and administrators seemed natural. However, later on as heads cleared,
repeated declarations of "We thought it couldn't happen here" seemed
hazily irrational. The six high-profile school shootings preceding
Columbine's all involved quiet, non-urban campuses. So did the adults,
who should have been more perceptive, think their own school was
Disneyland? Did they think the Swastika-wearing guys lurking in the
dark coats were just pretending to be Goofy and Mickey?
[8] Logically, anything is possible but not anything is probable.
Carnage in the classroom is highly improbable on any given day in any
given town. Yet mass murder, even on a scale far larger than that
experienced in Littleton, has established itself as a distinct
possiblity in America. I suspect that in the case of Columbine, the
common idea that grave violence was impossible may have sadly increased
its probability.
[9] When inexperienced kids ask "Why?" I can understand. However, the
hapless whys of the grown-ups are troubling. An adult perspective
should possess specificity. We should ask not just why, but why were
teenagers allowed to stockpile weapons? Why would parents allow
children to soak their young lives in hatred? Why in a place of
learning were there no many unintelligent presumptions? And above all,
why were two grandly violent, mean and twisted boys tolerated at school
and cultivated at home?
J. ELYSE SINGLETON is a freelance writer who lives in Denver and has
written for publications in the United States, England, and New
Zealand. From October 1992 to January 1994, she was a regular columnist
for The Denver Post, which also published this essay after the
shooting. She has received several awards, including one for
excellence in journalism from the Colorado chapter of the Society of
Professional Journalists. She is currently completing a novel that
focusses on two young black women in World War II.
Copyright ©1999
Ann Kibbey. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. |
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