Well, the kid's photo has finally been released, I am I guess I can see where the Jack Black comparison's came from. Poor child. Between looking like that, going to a majority black school, and having a name like Asa Coon, I guess I understand why dude might have a little built up angst. Some heads, particularly the negligent principal, will roll over this whole ordeal, some lawsuits will be filed, and this Hot Urban Mess will get alot uglier before it gets prettier.
One thing that is still fairly puzzling is the media's downplaying of Coon's race, and the possibility that this attack might have just been racially motivated. Again, it obviously doesn't matter since Coon at the check-in desk in West Hell right now, but how else do you explain the relative overlooking of race in the coverage of this incident?
I listened to my favorite conservative talk show this morning on my drive in (you know the one), and there was no mention at all of this factor, nor did the Cable News Taliban (Beck, Grace, OReilly, Hannity) bother bringing it up. It took the press three days to release photos of Coon, despite the fact that the shooting victims have been splashed over the screen 24/7 since Wednesday. My girl Anne-Marie from BackYardBeacon said this was simply a case of access to the photos taking longer than expected. That's the AP's explanation, but I'm not buying it for a second. Early media accounts of this story either completely neglected to mention Coon's race, buried it deep in their stories as a mere footnote, or danced around it by offering visceral descriptions (Marilyn Manson fan, Goth MySpace page, black fingernails) of the shooter instead. It would have been very easy to take all this in and make the assumption that this was just another case of inner city Negroes wildin' out. Clearly it isn't.
I wonder if this hesitance to dwell on Coon's race and the role it might have played in his alienation and subsequent acting out is intentional. Clearly, white-on-black crime is all over the news right now; between the Jena Six, the proliferation of nooses (seriously, WTH?) "magically appearing" all over the nation, and the grizzly Megan Williams abduction in West Virginia. Could this be a case of purposely downplaying a particular element of a story to avoid a piling-on effect?
Who knows? I have my theories (c.o.n.spiracy) but I'm my more level headed readers will give me theirs.
Plain Dealer obtains first photos of Asa Coon [Cleveland.com]
Friday, October 12, 2007
The The Media Downplay Asa Coon's Race?
Tags Popped: The Evil That Men Do, White Men Gone Wild
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4 AverageComments™:
The media rarely, if ever, makes a big deal of a person's race if they are white. Think of the Columbine kids. The fact they were white was never brought up, though most of us assumed it. So whenever the race isn't mention, then I just assume the person is white. Colored people are the others, not white people.
As for the picture, I don't know. The WTC was hit around 9 and by 6, the media had the hijackers pics. Unless this kid just didn't take any yearbooks pics and didn't have any friends, there should have been a couple pics floating around.
Lastly, I went to school with kids like him. I was a loner and so most of my friends were loners too (sounds crazy, but that's how it goes). One of my bff was this white kid named Brian, who was sweet, but ALWAYS got picked on. Our school was 80% black and a lot of the kids thought it was funny to pick on the oddball white kid. He got into more than a few fights and confrontations. He developed an intense hate and anger for school and ALWAYS talked about doing something violent to the school. Luckily, nothing ever came of it.
I also was thinking about all the flak the media got from showing photos of Seung-Hui Cho (VA Tech). Granted there's huge difference between an enormous about of coverage and the total absence of a single photo, I still wonder. In other words, once you start the visual coverage there seems to be no turning down the volume. And Seung-Hui Cho’s video gave us more unsettling public insight than we’ve ever had before. There has been some thinking (and dispute) as to whether kids out there who are teetering on the verge are "darkly empowered" by these images and see in them their "hero" and/or themselves. I don't know. Clearly, Asa Coon was in very deep trouble and his complete homicidal and suicidal mental breakdown is certainly a reminder that whatever your background/economic position (etc), fractured lives like this just seem to go along with little awareness or effective intervention. And some do end like this or worse. Quite similarly, look at how difficult it is to deal with serious domestic violence and stalking.
Out right serious bullying of a SINGLE individual over a long period of time is certainly a way to get a person to hate their tormentors. And if by the circumstances the bullying group and the victim are consciously or subconsciously creating "us versus them" markers or delineations, it's probably more likely to quickly escalate on both sides. Given some people’s situation at home, it only makes the bullying and the snapping more likely. Of course all this depends on the individual and circumstances, but it’s like playing Russian Roulette.
From personal experience on the picture desk and participating in these conversations, I encourage you AverageBro to send an e-mail to Kenny Irby, who is the Visual Journalism Leader at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and regarded as the "industry thinker." He's also African American and a minister.
Backyard Beacon
i touch on this very subject on my blog... i just happened to be up very late (after midnight) on the evening of the shooting and there still was no picture of the shooter, yet there was no hesitation to show frame-after-frame-after-frame of the Black students at the school. there seemed to be a disconnect because i'd NEVER heard of a Black high schooler shooting up his school and then turning the gun on himself.
unless convinced otherwise (by a credible person in the news industry), i'm convinced the shooter's picture was purposely omitted from all news accounts because he was white.
this deliberate coverup by the media may not be racist, but i would bet that if the shooter had been a Black boy, there is no doubt his picture (for a yearbook or baby picture or something) would have surfaced soon after his identity was known.
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