How Right-Wing Bullies Blame and Attack the Victims of Violence and Oppression

[Brewman_Jax]

http://www.alternet.org/story/154754/how...pression_/

From the article:

Quote:When Geraldo Rivera and other right-wing figures zeroed in on Trayvon Martin's hoodie as though it provided some sort of explanation or justification for the young man's tragic death, when right-wing websites began a smear campaign against the dead child's memory, they were playing right into a blame-the-victim script.

It's a script that is used almost always to reinforce white supremacist and patriarchal power structures. And it's a script that plays off a weakness of our Western worldview, our inclination to assign negative moral value to those who suffer--what psychologists call the "just world fallacy."

For many, it can be less disturbing, simpler to blame the victim than the system (and, by extension, ourselves) and no one exploits this weakness better than the right wing. Any time there's been a major backlash to a social movement, from civil rights to feminism to AIDS activism, the right has followed a similar victim-blaming script. The message gets injected into the culture: Black poverty is a symptom of pathology. Rape victims are asking for it. AIDS sufferers are being punished for their lifestyles. Those without health care should be left to die. And now, most horribly and tellingly, a dead young boy with skittles and iced tea in his hands had it coming.

The idea behind these smears is: it can't happen to you. It's not your problem. But racism, xenophobia, homophobia, patriarchy--these are our problems, problems the majority and the privileged perpetuate.


...

This is also a side effect of the Euro-centric social caste system. The glaring fact that not in protecting power structures, but also individuals. On various non-racist and non-conservative themed websites, Zimmerman had multiple defenders. The defense was mainly the trite "wait for the investigation" and "he should get a trial" memes, and even the defenders had defenders. It goes to my observation that when the topic is race, white people tend to drop everything and race to the defense of other white people, unless the incident of racism is clear, obvious, and irrefutable. Basically, if they aren't a bunch of cross-burning KKK members in full robes with crosses burning doing something obviously criminal, they will get a defense.

[jaxx]

We see the caste system in every part of the workings of this country. I keep telling bigots who think that white is almighty.....last year, for the first time, there were more non-white babies born in this country than white. I enjoy the look of total shock that comes across their faces.

[Brewman_Jax]

(04-01-2012 10:54 AM)jaxx Wrote:  We see the caste system in every part of the workings of this country. I keep telling bigots who think that white is almighty.....last year, for the first time, there were more non-white babies born in this country than white. I enjoy the look of total shock that comes across their faces.

I'm sure they aren't happy with that. They'll be less happy when they find that they can't run any farther away from "those people" because "those people" will be their neighbors, their bosses and managers and executives, their kids' teachers and principals and other students...in both public and private schools.

It will be their nightmare come to pass: "those people" will be in a position to them what to do, and not just at work.