Beyond horror
Sep. 21st, 2006 12:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flewellynThose of you who have read me for a long time know that most of the time, I post things that are silly or meant to be humorous.
This is not one of those times.
I want to call your attention to this news story, concerning a woman whose body was found Monday morning in the small Colorado town of Surrey Ridge; she had been noosed, the noose then tied to the back of a car, and dragged to her death, leaving a mile-long trail of blood on the road. She has not yet been identified, as her body was mutilated beyond recognition.
When I heard about this case, I was immediately reminded of the similar lynching of James Byrd, Jr. in 1998, in Jasper, Texas. He was also dragged behind a car until he died; his body was also horribly mutilated. Within 24 hours, the police had determined that this was a hate crime, as his assailants were known white supremacists. The FBI was called in, the murder was immediately condemned as an act of racism, and Byrd's death instantly became the focus of a national conversation about racial politics and hate crimes. It even became an issue during the 2000 Presidential campaign.
Well, this unidentified woman has been dead for a week. The FBI have not, apparently, become involved. The suspect is apparently an illegal immigrant, so INS is involved, but the murder case itself is being pursued by state and local authorities. That in itself isn't so wrong, in my eyes.
What is wrong, is that this case has gotten nowhere near the same amount of attention. It's all over their local news, of course, but while national news has carried stories about it, none of them were on the front page. The woman has yet to be identified positively. And most importantly, in my mind, is that there is no discussion, in law enforcement, in the mainstream media or in the general blogosphere, about calling this a hate crime. Outside of explicitly feminist circles, those words aren't even mentioned. Nothing about violence against women in general, nothing about how much this resembled a lynching, nothing about how, gee, maybe there is a growing problem with violent acts against women.
Where is the outcry?
I have seen various discussion boards where the subject became one of illegal immigration, with the usual bigoted shitstains trying to blame it on the fact that the suspect is Latino, or talking about how "those people" are just the sort of people to beat and murder "their" women. Nothing, though, about how common assault and murder of women is in this country (for example: the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US is homicide). Nothing about the problem of rampant misogyny. Nothing about invoking VAWA for this crime.
Where is the outcry, I ask you?
This is not one of those times.
I want to call your attention to this news story, concerning a woman whose body was found Monday morning in the small Colorado town of Surrey Ridge; she had been noosed, the noose then tied to the back of a car, and dragged to her death, leaving a mile-long trail of blood on the road. She has not yet been identified, as her body was mutilated beyond recognition.
When I heard about this case, I was immediately reminded of the similar lynching of James Byrd, Jr. in 1998, in Jasper, Texas. He was also dragged behind a car until he died; his body was also horribly mutilated. Within 24 hours, the police had determined that this was a hate crime, as his assailants were known white supremacists. The FBI was called in, the murder was immediately condemned as an act of racism, and Byrd's death instantly became the focus of a national conversation about racial politics and hate crimes. It even became an issue during the 2000 Presidential campaign.
Well, this unidentified woman has been dead for a week. The FBI have not, apparently, become involved. The suspect is apparently an illegal immigrant, so INS is involved, but the murder case itself is being pursued by state and local authorities. That in itself isn't so wrong, in my eyes.
What is wrong, is that this case has gotten nowhere near the same amount of attention. It's all over their local news, of course, but while national news has carried stories about it, none of them were on the front page. The woman has yet to be identified positively. And most importantly, in my mind, is that there is no discussion, in law enforcement, in the mainstream media or in the general blogosphere, about calling this a hate crime. Outside of explicitly feminist circles, those words aren't even mentioned. Nothing about violence against women in general, nothing about how much this resembled a lynching, nothing about how, gee, maybe there is a growing problem with violent acts against women.
Where is the outcry?
I have seen various discussion boards where the subject became one of illegal immigration, with the usual bigoted shitstains trying to blame it on the fact that the suspect is Latino, or talking about how "those people" are just the sort of people to beat and murder "their" women. Nothing, though, about how common assault and murder of women is in this country (for example: the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US is homicide). Nothing about the problem of rampant misogyny. Nothing about invoking VAWA for this crime.
Where is the outcry, I ask you?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 08:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 08:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 10:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 09:47 pm (UTC)White victims and white offenders accounted for 55% of sexual
assault murders, black victims and black offenders accounted for
24% of all murders involving sexual assault, 2% involved black
victims and white offenders, 15% involved white victims and
black offenders, and the remainder involved victims and
offenders of other races.
From: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/soo.txt
U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Sex Offenses and Offenders:
An Analysis of Data on Rape
and Sexual Assault
By Lawrence A. Greenfeld
BJS Statistician
February 1997, NCJ-163392
no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 11:44 am (UTC)victims and white offenders, 15% involved white victims and
black offenders,
wow
no subject
Date: 2006-09-24 01:26 am (UTC)Black women are less likely to get real justice when raped by a white male, because white men are the ruling class, and black women are both black and female. Doubly of a lower class. A rape victim in general is less likely to be believed when her attacker is of a higher class, and sadly, class makes her more likely to be victimized. An upper class rapist simply believes she is there for his use, and doesn't qualify for as much 'personhood' as, say, a white woman.