Male pattern Whiteness! maybe there'll be a cure someday.

jeje

What I keep saying: white guys have the worst records. But people don't believe me.

This reminds me of a recent pair of bank robberies in a nearby town. The first robbers were described as three young men wearing black ski masks. On the town's message board, people started talking about how horrible African American and Latino people were, how "their culture" made them that way, etc. etc. The description had never mentioned race.

The next week, another bank was robbed (by a different robber), and the suspect was decribed as a young black or Hispanic man by eyewitnesses. Again, people posted hateful and racist things on the town message board. The next day, the paper released images of the robber from a security camera — the clearly white, middle-aged, balding robber.

Everyone shut up real fast and both of those threads on the message board were deleted a couple of days later.

Well, I don't know about you all, but I'm moving out of the suburbs first thing tomorrow morning.

I used to be a peaceful guy, but when I started smoking the Washington Post and drinking fifths of O'Reilly I just stopped caring about anything but getting my next hit.

Wow, no wonder strangers look at me with suspicion.

I was thinking on this very topic la semana pasada after seeing an article in our local rag about the top 10 most wanted criminals in the county. The predominantly white county. There was una chica blanquita, seis latinos, and tres black men. "Do folks like me not commit crimes," I asked myself, "or do we just not want to arrest ourselves as badly?" So I started watching what crime was reported.

Mostly there are no pictures, no mention of race in stories about crime suspects, arrests and convictions. Most of the time, the criminals' names are even generically non-comittal. Or maybe we (at least I) don't notice because they look like everyone else, have similar names to everyone else. What skew's the perception for many of us, I think, is that the names that do betray race are notably hispanic.

Which is a shame. Not their names or their latino-ness, but . . . something. I know plenty of latinos. I don't know any hispanic criminals. In fact, all the criminals (the convicted ones, the violent ones) I've ever personally known have been white.

Somehow, it doesn't seem right to expect that race be explicitly detailed in the news blurbs. As if we should note "Kimberly J. Wenzel, 44, of Plymouth, and Steven C. Levin, 37, of Cudahy, [who are white], are charged with felony counts of possession with intent to deliver cocaine, meth, marijuana, narcotic drugs and non-narcotic drugs, as well as misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia." (italics added by me, who just pulled this from the paper as an example and does not know either Kimberly or Steven or anything about them). But would that really be any different than, "Zachariah B. Cuellar was charged in Sheboygan County Circuit Court with felony cocaine possession, resisting an officer and first-offense operating after revocation."

I don't know the solution. Maybe we just need more face to face between latino and non-latino. Especially between nuestros ninos, no? Maybe that would help some.

Well, on the one hand I can see what you mean, Jack, but it does make sense to list attributes of physical appearance if they are wanted people. So you know who you are looking for. Yet, you will notice if you look up crimes or suspects wanted that very often, white suspects are just described as suspects, just criminals. But when the suspect is of color, that is noted. The purpose seems twofold. One, to reinforce this false notion in America that the "Universal" or "standard" human is white. The other is to remind everyone how dangerous The Darkie is.

I don't know t hat listing the color/race/ethnicity of a wanted person or criminal or alleged criminal is the problem. But there is a clear disproporationate ratio that exists between what is happening, and what is being reported and how.

Por ejemplo, in new york papers there is almost ALWAYS a black man or person of color's mugshot in the paper. At all times. Why? There are plenty of white criminals. But it is important to the movers and shakers of the nation, the corporate entities, the white elite, that we all remember the danger of the Heathen, the Native, the Primitive, the Greaser, the Indian, the Negro, the Mexican, the Dark Menace—names have changed and will change over time. What will not change is that the white man must be seen as good and the brown man must be seen as a threat. This vision underpins our entire nation, its laws, its history, its public conversation. Not in ways that can always be clearly seen by all, but always operating on some level.

"there is almost ALWAYS a black man or person of color's mugshot in the paper"

It's like the inverse side of the missing white girl alerts.

Yet, you will notice if you look up crimes or suspects wanted that very often, white suspects are just described as suspects, just criminals.
- nezua limón xolagrafik-jonez

Although, reading your site here, I am acquiring the cynical sense that such a critical point will not be reached without struggle. At least, we will not recognize that we have reached it without some event to serve as catalyst. You make a compelling argument that there are too many interests with a stake in not reaching that point.

dont be cynical. be glad. like the trash bag!

lol . . . are the two mutually exclusive?

jack, i dont think it's the proportion of people that accounts for this feature i mention. that's...sort of the point of my post. and the point of mentioning that there is always a black/brown face in the paper or the news. i mean, yes a local paper in sheboygan is not going to mention a white person being white. but i am not spekaing of something that only happens in small white town reporting. look at ken burns and his original statements for excluding latinos from his massive THE WAR documentary (you can serach the site if you want, ken burns). he said he wanted to present "a universal" picture. but why is it universal to exclude latinos? it is a thought pattern here in the USA entire.

also, the prevalence of dark faces being cited as criminals is not due to there being more of them doing crime. that is what the hynotists want us to think, tho. sure in some areas it's true, but this happens all the time, in all places i've seen. start lookin out. see how many mugshots of wanted men you see that are brown vs white.

it's part of a long-time agenda as american as apple pie; unspoken and often disguised, yet enacted on the regular and reinforced in many ways. there are myriad examples of this. sort of how the cops in Clackamas want to frame the recent mob beating of two Latinos (shouts of "go back to mexico") in a park as an "isolated incident." they are incapable of drawing the larger picture (hate crimes toward latinos up a massive 23% in only two years, tween 03 and 05, and still we have men like lou dobbs and others talking about mexicans as molesters and lepers and invaders and alienz?

this country does much of its regular business hating the darkie, and we all like to pretend we're so much better than lynching people these days. but the census numbers and the may day marches have scared the veneer right off of everyone! it's refreshingly honest in a land of lies. but scary for me and those like me.

we are getting to a critical point. i mean the recent teargas parade in LA was a sure sign. the Hutto prisons and other secret containment centers for mexicans in america. that 20-30 white on brown (2) beating was a sign. the hate speech on the radios and tvs. the KKK and similar groups memberships' growing rapidly since the "immigration issue" was created. it's all signs. surely they are clear.

Well, like I say, I do see it even here where the Sheboygan Press published pictures of top 10 most wanted criminals and only one was white while six were hispanic. Demographically, that ratio just didn't make sense. It got me thinking on this same topic, watching it here locally all week. Estamos de acuerdo, you and I.

I don't know what I was trying to communicate exactly. Maybe it was nothing more than a "hey, it's been on my mind, too!" Or maybe just pointing out another dimension to the issue. Just wondering if there is a practical expectation we can have of the press to change what they publish or how they do so. I mean, addressing it on this site, like you do is good. Really good. I assure you, this will be la charla at my home this evening. That's all a good thing. Maybe it's the thing that will affect how we read las noticias and then how my kids read them even if how they're written doesn't change. One more lesson teaching my kids to stand up on the side of the two against the thirty, right?

Maybe if enough of us talk about the issue, maybe one day even the Sheboygan Press will have pictures of Kimberly and Steven along with the article about their arrest. You know, in the interest of fairness and balance.

yes i suppose it was a bit unclear to me, as well, what you were communicating. i apprecaite you taking the time to be clearer.

i dont want to see kimberly and steven arrested. i'd like to see less people arrested, and more cops out of work, personally. but realistically, yeah, i would like to see more people reading critically. training the mind is hugely important. there's a mountain of agenda out there. even in our own thinking and we dont see it so many times.

yes, good things to teach kids. critical thinking, skeptical reading, finding out who funds what publications and products and polls...it tells one much more than just absorbing passively the end data.