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Does 'White Male Privilege' Explain the Sandy Hook Shootings?

Are 'frustrated,' entitled white men to blame for recent mass killings?

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by Dain Fitzgerald

Staff Writer t

Sandy Hook killer Adam Lanza / Image: News One

Here's a nearly novel idea - "nearly" because it was first introduced in July following the Dark Knight shootings - to explain last Friday's horrific attack: White Male Privilege.

Eliana Johnson at National Review passes along a theory on offer from Gawker's Hugo Schwyzer, namely that "frustrated" white men with an aggrandized sense of entitlement are the rot at the core of the mass shootings in recent years (seemingly all this year). This would explain the fact of white males' disproportionate perpetration of such crimes, according to Schwyzer.

"Every killer makes his pain another's problem," he writes. "But only those who've marinated in privilege can conclude that their private pain is the entire world's problem with which to deal."

It's a provocative theory to be sure, but does it apply to Sandy Hook killer Adam Lanza, described as "pale, tall, scrawny, nervous, fidgety," afraid to speak, and without any friends by the New York Times? Time was that privilege was reserved for the popular kids, the jocks, and the valedictorians. Are the criteria for "privilege" being rewritten to allow for pained, possibly mentally ill loners who off themselves?

If so, well that's an odd kind of privilege.

Via National Review, Jezebel, xoJane and the New York Times.
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Does a theory of 'white male privilege' help explain the mass shootings lately?

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Comments (view in Forum)

  • bsking
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    this is ridiculous let me guess whoever wrote this story I thought the president campaign didn't racially divide us enough.
  • u
    Polusalo
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    And yet another story that damn near the entire community can come together, stop, look at it and just think... "wat?".

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    tomincali
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    that is one of the craziest things i have ever heard,white males have no special treatment look it up it is illegal only others are allowed to have that.check a/a
  • jessejaymes
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    I understand when a moderator takes this post down but this "theory" of white male privilege applied to this lonely looney tune killer at Sandy Hook is an out and out crock of shit.
  • Post Removed by Moderators
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    Neo_NtheMatrix
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    Okay, let me get this right. So Adam Lanza felt privileged as a white male so he went and killed other white males? I'm scratching my head here. Hey, liberals, can one of you break this down for me. I'm truly stuck here.
  • Neo_NtheMatrix
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    @stepped_in_it - But then liberals would have to label that Male Privilege. Specifically, why would he kills white people if he felt whites were privileged? And people wonder why I don't support expanding the mental health industrial complex.
  • u
    Laradian
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    Don't be stuck. It means that white males have historically been way more privileged can other minority groups. But now that's all changing will the fast rising tide of latinos in this country and the election of Btrack Obama twice.

    The result is that white males are seeing their advantage slipping away and others catching up surpassing them which leads to the frustration of many of them and most noticeably Rush Limbaugh.
  • Neo_NtheMatrix
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    @Laradian - I understand the moronic assertion of White Male Privilege. I just don't understand why one who thinks they are privileged as a white male would kill other white males. If this theory you proposed held an ounce of sense then white males would go after those who they feel are marginalizing them. So in that theory Lanza would have shot up a school of minorities. Again, I cannot support expanding the mental health industrial complex when they promote these ridiculous unproductive theories.
  • u
    Laradian
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    @Neo_NtheMatrix

    This frustration is manifesting itself through violence perpetrated by these individuals. Their hopes and dreams have been stamped "Canceled" so they won't others to feel the pain but they are going through.

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  • Denizen_Kate
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    Most likely forgot their meds. I've known many acid heads and used the stuff myself way back in my wild youth, and none of us were this stupid.
  • jessejaymes
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    Psychobabble is exactly what it is. Look at the photo of the killer kid. Does that face say to you that he felt entitled? That he thought he was better than other people? That kid never had a good day in his entire life. He killed those people telling his vision of society "I know you won't miss me if I kill myself but if I kill a bunch of kids you'll remember me". He was right. How sad it had to come to this for him to get any attention. But this is not white male entitlement. This is someone who never could cope with the world of beautiful and happy people. He was nuts. White male privilege? That's a racist blanket.
  • Fishbone345
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    ""I know you won't miss me if I kill myself but if I kill a bunch of kids you'll remember me". He was right. How sad it had to come to this for him to get any attention."
    Maybe we should consider not immortalizing them for all time. The Media does exactly that by putting out everything it can find on the killers.
  • jessejaymes
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    @Fishbone345 I wrote a movie script some years back (never sold) about a serial Killer. I did about year's worth of research on both serial and spree killers. I'm not excusing or justifying what he did. But he didn't do it for some altruistic cause or movement or being evil or getting even. He did it for attention. No I'm not a shrink but I think he did for the same reason so many spree killers do kill. He was lonely, he was frustrated, he could see himself in the mirror. He could watch porn on the computer but he was never going to sleep with a woman. he knew that. He was hurt all his life by his inability to be anything but vermin in this society. he knew who he was. And he knew if he killed himself nobody would even care. Probably not even his mother. But if he killed a bunch of kids and then killed himself he would be famous. It's as good as it ever got for him. He died "somebody" in his mind I bet. Our society will never change enough for kids like him to find a niche in life. There will always be his kind out there.

    I tried really hard with that screenplay to understand what someone that kills over and over again is thinking. In my story it was a bout a sexually abused kid who grows up and starts doing the vengeance. thing. I wrote the soundtrack as well. In the song "Mommy, mommy daddy" there is a line that I suspect might fit this kid's frame of mind although for different reasons perhaps.

    "Mommy mommy daddy hurt me, couldn't you hear me screaming in my mind
    Mommy Mommy daddy hurt me but you never saved me one single time"

    You have to be hurting so bad none of us can understand to turn your guns on your mother, little kids and yourself.
  • Fishbone345
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    @jessejaymes Yes, all of that supports what I said. I didn't say he did it for "some altruistic cause or movement or being evil or getting even".
    Likely he like others before him, wanted what he didn't have. To be more than another face in the crowd. And the Media supports that mindset by immortalizing him in history.
  • jessejaymes
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    @Fishbone345 The Media does because we do. From the days of Jack the Ripper and beyond. We have an insatiable appetite for crime in America.
  • Denizen_Kate
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    @Fishbone345 - Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold once discussed the probability that Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino would fight over the movie rights to their life stories. They may have been right about that. As a society, we have far too much interest in the sensational, even the horrible. The media just responds to what the public wants. If we want them to stop, we first have to stop giving them our attention.
  • jessejaymes
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    That depends on the neighborhood. Depends on his gang status, on how old you are, how well you can defend yourself. For lots of people reporting a violent crime can be your own death sentence. That's a loaded question buddy.
  • u
    powerplay60
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    Whites. Domestic violence. Of course, most minorities' crimes aren't committing in the house; therefore, they wouldn't have seen anything. Like gun situation, if a white teen is killed by a gun, he's sitting in his parents' home and more than likely pulled the trigger himself. Of children between the ages of 9-19 killed by gun; which accounts for roughly 3500 deaths a year, 1900 of them are suicides by Whites.

    Whites need special privileges, they're weak natured. If any other ethnicity is embarrassed, you probably won't know; whereas, Whites just can't hide it and have to react, they are afterall the true colored people.
  • Calfkiller
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    Yeah i've had a pretty respectable opinion of most of your article's up to this point Dain. Uhhmm what can I say other than this is one of the stupidest articles i've seen in awhile. I would say Secularism and rampant Liberalism in this country are the root of the problem. Did you hear of any shootings like this in the 50's, 60's,70's,80's? Yeah that was rhetorical. Our country rejecting moral values and the traditional family are the base of this issue.
  • dances-weebles
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    @Calfkiller well, you're the one who mentioned it, so i thought that you knew something that i don't. if you're referring to a 'societal moral standard', by definition it doesn't exist. and i've net met one person who is rejecting family values.
  • Calfkiller
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    @dances-weebles no i'm just letting you unspring your own trap. I know the drill. you were hoping I would quote the Bible or something similar so you could take a shot at the Ten Commandments, i'm guessing. Or Conservatives in general. I'm more of a Constitutionalist than I am a conservative

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  • Ttenneb
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    Wow! Why can't people just take responsibility for their actions and quit blaming everything on someone or something , he was crazy, that's the only explanation there is , it wasn't because his parents had loads of money, and also those guns didn't load themselves and jump into his hands, and didn't tell him to shoot those kids !
  • u
    Pack7
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    Blame it all on the white man. Idiots like Chris "Tingles" Matthews and Red Neck Ed Schultz are pushing this theory on everybody now. Try 60 years of liberalism shoved down our throats. It ain't workin'. More and more secularism, more and more violence. We need to try something else.
  • u
    Pack7
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    @jamesmitchell
    I ask you the same question. Recommend something. It has got to be better than what we have been subjected to.
  • u
    Pack7
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    @PoliticalSpice
    Are you telling me that whatever we have been doing is good for this country? It should be self explanatory to most. We need to have places of treatment for the mentally ill in our society. The liberal experiment of giving them total freedom to act as they wish with no accountability has not worked. We have attacked tradition in this country to the point where some secular idiots want to ban all religious holidays and even the mention of God in any public venue. Looking at the state of things in this country and now especially with a far left President, it appears we are headed down the slippery slope even faster than was predicted. We murder little unborn babies. While we don't take assault rifles to them, we use forceps and other utensils to crush their innocent little scalps, in order to suck them out of the womb. We are acceptable of conduct now that was deemed reprehensible for most years of my life. We allow pornography yet women protest about rape. When evidence clearly shows a correlation between porn and violent sexual crime, the civil libertarians rear their ugly heads and scream "censorship". I could go on and on but it is obvious we need a return to more traditional values in this country. The loony left has a stranglehold on this country and don't tell me you can't see where it is taking us.

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