I think Conor Friedersdorf is correct in everything except for the reason white folks don’t want to pay too much attention to the Wisconsin massacre. I don’t think it is because white folks fear that the organs of our security state will be turned on them. I don’t think that white folks identify with the shooter unless they are also in the white power movement. White folks probably should worry, but they have different reasons for not caring too much about this particular story. And, in any case, it’s not clear why fearing the implications of a story would make that story less compelling rather than more.
The real reason the Wisconsin massacre isn’t creating the same demand as the Batman massacre is actually identified by Friedersdorf in his piece.
…Robert Wright wonders if the disparity is due to the fact that most people who shape discourse in America “can imagine their friends and relatives — and themselves — being at a theater watching a Batman movie,” but can’t imagine themselves or their acquaintances in a Sikh temple. “This isn’t meant as a scathing indictment; it’s only natural to get freaked out by threats in proportion to how threatening they seem to you personally,” Wright says, adding that the press ought to give much more coverage to the incident.
Just take me for an example. I have two teen-age stepsons who go to movies on a regular basis. But they have never yet taken the car and wound up at a place of worship. I don’t even know where the nearest Sikh temple is, and neither do the kids. So, the Colorado massacre struck fear into me in the “that could have been us” kind of way. The Wisconsin massacre just made me sad and angry. Whatever fear it generated was abstract, in that it made me fear for people of color all across our country. But it didn’t sit right down in my family. It wasn’t as personal. There was zero sense that, but for some random chance, my family could be grieving right now.
On another level, though, the Colorado story was more compelling on its own merits. Houses of worship are attacked every day. Someone burned down a Mosque in Tennessee just this week. Read the newswires from Iraq and attacks are constant. It happens all throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. We have seen the Wisconsin story before. But no one had ever seen anything like what happened in Colorado. It was completely novel. So, it wasn’t just about the color of the victims or the race of the shooter. The crime aroused a lot of curiosity. Add in the guy turning his apartment into a trip-wired bomb, and there’s really no comparison.
But what ought to concern people is that there isn’t too great of a chance of some superhero-junkie shooting up another movie theatre, but there are a LOT of white supremacists in our society who are one bad day away from creating the next massacre. That’s the most important story. Colorado is over. Wisconsin is not.
