In the news, myth making at the Fort Hood shootings:
“Though the official version of events won’t be available until the military releases the results of its investigation, Todd told the New York Times in an interview Thursday that it was indeed he who fired the shots that brought down Hasan. He said that he and Munley both pulled up to the scene at the same time and, after receiving fire from Hasan when they ordered him to drop his weapon, each broke in different directions. After aborting an attempt to circle the building, Todd said he headed back to the front of the building where he saw Munley wounded on the ground. He said that he then ordered Hasan to drop his weapon a second time, which again prompted the gunman to fire upon him. It was at this point that Todd told the Times that he “neutralized him and secured him.”
In the aftermath of the week-long confusion over who brought down Hasan, some are not holding back in criticizing the media and the military for their roles in the chaos — the media for not not digging deeper and thus performing their jobs properly, and the military for being too secretive. Some have even questioned whether or not there might have been a racial component involved with crediting a white woman over a black man as the day’s hero.”
My Comment:
“Might have been”?
Ah.
No one usually would intentionally write out the role of a heroic black man to give it to a white woman. Probably not. But unintentionally they often do. That’s a form of unconscious racism that becomes institutional, to use the in-vogue word.
People “just assume” that it wasn’t the black man who did it…..if they even saw him as a subject… and not just background.
This isn’t exaggeration. It’s the way the contributions of most people in the world is appropriated.
We just assume that non-white people do menial things in between tribal wars, and that the heroic, the creative, the original, the value-producing things are done by non-tribal whites.
We assume this not because we’re racists but because empire blinds us.
Having your thumb on the scales to fix the game so that you always come out the winner tends to make you swallow your own mythology and believe that you really are always the winner. Which on its face is absurd, since intelligence and creativity are found much more widely distributed.
Again, it’s not intentional racism. It’s the underlying arrogance of empire. It’s the distortion in morality produced by the distortion in markets. Which is ultimately caused by the state.