“The single greatest risk factor in school violence is masculinity. The analytic blindness of previous work runs deep runs even deeper than gender. All but two if the twenty-eight school shootings profiled in the FBI report were committed by white boys who lived in suburbs or rural areas. As a result, the public had assumed that these boys were deviants, their aberrant behavior explainable by some psychopathological factor” – “I am not insane; I am angry.” – Michael S. Kimmel
The number of school shootings and gun violence as a whole for me represents one the greatest crises that we are facing as a nation. A couple of weeks ago in my student teaching placement we had to practice being on lock down in the case of a shooter and it made me angry. Angry that it has become such a problem that we have to have “drills” in case of a shooting, angry that we are perpetuating this culture of violence, angry that for young people coming to school no longer means that they are coming to a safe place and angry that our government as a whole chooses to ignore this problem.
When “Straight Outta Compton” came out a few months ago I remember news stations warning about violence at movie theaters and then when nothing went wrong remarked on their “surprise” that the movie premiere had gone off with no violent incidents. My black friends were quick to take to Facebook, reminding the public that it is not black people that go around shooting up movie theaters. The stereotypes about black people as “violent” or “thugs” are most quickly dispelled by the reality that white males are extremely violent, and arguably they have less reason to be so angry. How did we become so entitled that if we feel bullied we feel that we are allowed to kill people in response? When did taking someone else’s life ever become a solution to our inner problems? Many blacks are constantly being barraged with insults and discrimination, yet when white male’s sexual identity is threatened and he feels so angry that he gets a gun and kills innocent people? Throughout all this talk about racism and blaming of black people for their anger over systemic racism, we never question the white man’s anger. What are they so angry about? What has our society taught them that they even consider such mass violence an option? I do not know, but I am angry that we are not doing more about it.