Quote:
Originally posted by jennofay
well, lock me up i guess. every one of these things that the article made out to be "traits of a killer" is something that applies to me. i wear mostly black because i find that i feel more comfortable in it, and i dont have to worry about matching. ive read books about witchcraft and many other religions because religion as a whole fascinates me. i am not religious, i dont believe in organized religion, but i do find it to be intriguing. i spend, or i used to spend, way too much time on the internet. now i just do when im procrastinating from studying for a test
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The article did what is was suppose to do. It is suppose to identify unique traits; facts that make the event unique from the public, in general; and from other crimes. IOW they provided raw facts and did not draw conclusions.
Unfortunately, they are raw facts. Too many cannot discern raw facts from a conclusion. Too many jump to conclusions only based upon raw facts. That is not the paper's fault. Assumed is that the paper has drawn conclusions when all they have done is provide raw facts - as they should have.
The basis of racism - which is really only pre-judging people by first impressions (color of skin included) - is a science article in this week's The Economist. We humans constantly try to immediately judge people by first impressions. It is why we so push person A to "make a good first impression" rather than address person B's racist attitudes. Attitudes that make it necessary for Person A to make that good first impression.
We categorize immediately based upon our own biases. Those biases are how we "categorize" rather than "wait for the fact to be in before drawing conclusions".
I don't blame the Washington Post for providing raw facts. I blame humanity for not addressing this evil need to condemn based only upon first impressions. IOW that Economist article discusses how to make a racist not longer a racist. The racist is taught how to categorize differently so that he does not make immediately and therefore inaccurately conclude erroneous first impressions.
We always do this. For example, when the NBC radio lineup was Don Imus in the morning, Soupy Sales around noon, and Howard in the afternoon, I had this impression of Robin Quivers as a white girl who always worn long red dresses. I was therefore biased because I had categorized based only upon raw facts - her voice.
I draw no conclusions based upon the fact that all accused murder's coincidentally wore long black leather coats. It is a raw fact that I thank the Washington Post for. In the future it may lead to a significant conclusion; or maybe just nothing more than a memory hook. But I draw no conclusions based upon any descriptions of those accused murders in the Post. In trying to be tolerant, I don't suddenly fear people who wear only black (even though I am sometimes suspicious of Priests and Nuns). My entire life, I have been trying to eliminate racism in my thinking. As the Economist noted, we will never accomplish it. But we must keep trying. To make any conclusions of that Washington Post article's raw facts would simply be another form of racism.
I can appreciate jennofay's concern for how those raw facts were presented because too many of us don't come to grips with how racist we categorized those who are different. IOW those raw facts presented by the Washington Post will result is a racist attitude against groups who all wear long black leather coats. But that is not the fault of the Post. That is the fault of us - the public - who don't encourage tolerance. Tolerance is to wait; reserve conclusions until more than a few raw facts are presented.
The paper presented raw facts. They did not draw conclusions. Those conclusions will be drawn by racist attitudes - people who judge based solely on first impressions.