Seeing the Gun Violence Problem in Black and white: Racial Biases in Response to Rampage School Shootings by Jonathan McCausland and Kathryn M. Bateman
The National Student Walkout on March 14 and the Walkout on April 20, commemorating the Columbine shooting, were designed to raise awareness for gun violence experienced by United States youth. The March For Our Lives protests brought together a coalition of voices ranging from students in suburban/rural schools, who fear being the next victims of a school shooting, to students in urban schools, who fear not only school shootings but also a type of gun violence that typically garners a different kind of national attention. Every organization involved in these movements is advocating for stronger gun regulations to end the murder and traumatization of youth in America. While the March For Our Lives movement was driven by trauma experienced by white individuals, the Parkland activists attempted to broaden the range of voices heard throughout the demonstrations by including voices of students affected by gun violence in their communities. We as a society are giving attention to students affected by school shootings and rightly so. However, we need to acknowledge what the students themselves are seeing: gun violence is a universal problem. No matter where gun violence takes place, be it on the streets, in a home, or at school, it is impacting students. The only difference is who the victims and perpetrators commonly are; these factors are what dictate who gets visibility for their movement.
About one year before the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and only one hour away from Parkland, the residents of Miami Gardens were solemn in the remembrance of a student whose name and face had not made national news (Gurney, Teproff, & Rabin, 2017). They were honoring the anniversary of the death of King Carter, a six-year-old boy who was shot and killed on his way to the corner store to buy some candy. He was yet another student whose life was tragically cut short by gun violence in his neighborhood, yet he did not receive the same visibility as the 20 first graders slain at Sandy Hook. This is all too familiar for residents of some Miami-Dade communities. In 2015, 18 children were killed by guns, more than were killed at Parkland. In the same year, 46 more children were hospitalized with gun-related injuries; this number does not include the many children who are emotionally impacted by the gun violence in their neighborhoods. Though a little over 50 miles apart, Parkland and Miami Gardens share little demographic similarities. Parkland is majority white (66%) with 7.3% of the population being African American. Miami Gardens is majority African American (78%) with 3.3% of the population being white. The poverty levels also differ 3.5% of Parkland lives in poverty but 23.4% of Miami Gardens does (U.S. Census Bureau, 2018.) Gun violence is a part of students’ lives in Miami Gardens, yet Parkland is making international headlines mourning their loss and praising the students’ response.
Part of the headlines generated by the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas has surrounded their organization of the National Student Walkout. One social media-ignited alternative to the National Student Walkout was to “walk up not out,” where students would “walk up” to students and teachers as a sign of support and encouragements (Righter, 2018). One source of this social media campaign stems from Facebook user Kelly Guest who wrote:
Instead of walking out of school on March 14, encourage students to walk up – walk up to the kid who sits alone at lunch and invite him to sit with your group; walk up to the kid who sits quietly in the corner of the room and sit next to her, smile and say Hi; walk up to the kid who causes disturbances in class and ask how he is doing; walk up to your teacher and thank them; walk up to someone who has different views than you and get to know them – you may be surprised at how much you have in common. Build on that foundation instead of casting stones. I challenge students to find 14 students and 3 adults to walk up to on March 14 and say something nice in honor of those who died in FL. But you can start practicing now! #walkupnotout. (Guest, 2018)
Initially, the sentiment of having students be more inclusive and promoting an anti-bullying message is easy to agree with, and some activists organizing the National Student Walkout supported an “either or” approach (Hogg, 2018.) At face value, encouraging inclusivity and battling bullying seem like universal wins. However, this approach implies that if the children who are traumatized by school shootings were “nice” to the shooter, their friends and teachers would not have been murdered. This is victim blaming. Sentiments like “walk up, not out,” punishing student activists, and anti-bullying campaigns result in removing blame from the perpetrators of school shootings and placing blame firmly on the students and schools impacted by the violence while simultaneously requiring no response from policy makers. This is a vastly different reaction than the typical reaction to gun violence found in urban communities.
No matter where gun violence takes place, be it on the streets, in a home, or at school, it is impacting students. The only difference is who the victims and perpetrators commonly are; these factors are what dictate who gets visibility for their movement.
Understanding the differences between gun violence in different contexts, “walk up” days and similar events may actually reify our society based on a White Supremacist Patriarchal Ideology because of who this movement ultimately is intended to help – the people students and teachers perceive are most likely to commit a school shooting. While theoretically anyone could commit a school shooting, the group that commits this crime most often are white boys (Kimmel & Mahler, 2003.) White boys are afforded the special privilege of being “walked up” to, a privilege that minoritized groups are not provided. Days encouraging students to “walk up” to young men who turn to gangs for community and to put food on the table are unlikely to become a universal, viral social media campaign. There is no effort to “walk up” to students who identify along the LGBTQIA spectrum or students with disabilities to apologize for the use of incendiary terms against them. We should have a “walk up” day for our immigrant students who are forced to use English in schools rather than their language of choice or to young women whose bodies have been policed and objectified in our schools. These “walk ups” could serve as an apology to marginalized populations and include a promise to be inclusive moving forward by decentering the dominant group. Instead, we are asking for a “walk up” day in response to an event most often caused by white boys who have not experienced the marginalization of the aforementioned groups. Asking students to approach the dominant group as if to apologize for society’s mistreatment of them communicates a message that white boys are to be coddled while minoritized students are to be punished. Walk up to white boys, while walking out on all others.
For minoritized students, walking out takes the form of racist policies and rhetoric that dehumanizes them. Currently, there are no officials clamoring about how mental health could be driving the gun violence in our urban centers. Instead, schools install metal detectors, which can make students feel less, rather than more, safe in school (Hankin, Hertz, & Simon, 2011). Instead of advocating for the victims of gun violence to show support for students who may commit such atrocities, we suspend Black students at higher rates proportional to their population than their white peers (U.S Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, 2014), pushing them further to the margins of society. We also allow dehumanizing labels like “troublemaker,” “lazy,” or the too often used and highly racialized term “thug” to be ascribed to these individuals. These labels and stereotypes allow minoritized students to be seen as something to fear or not worthy of support. These feelings justify the existence of strong school to prison pipelines (Alexander, 2012) and the murder of unarmed Black boys by police officers, like the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice (Ali, 2016). Even the President has remarked on the violence in urban communities by stating, “Our inner cities are a disaster. You get shot walking to the store” (Covert, 2016). This stands in stark contrast with our President’s reaction to the most recent school shooting, stating, “Our Nation grieves with those affected by the shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas. May God heal the injured and may God comfort the wounded, and may God be with the victims and with the victims’ families” (Diamond & Tatum, 2018). These polarized reactions to violence against school-age children mirror that of the general public. Though the consequences of the violence are the same, the reactions are not. In the case of rampage school shootings by white boys, even mentioning gun control as a solution is rebuked in some circles, a response rooted in history.
Historically, gun control laws were more commonplace. While some laws were aimed at regulating firearms in the United States for all citizens, some laws were directly enacted to oppress Black people (Winkler, 2011). For example, after the Civil War, many Southern states adopted laws preventing black folks from owning guns (Winkler, 2011). A more recent example is California’s passing of a law restricting the carrying of firearms in California cities in response to the Black Panther Party arming themselves. Even Martin Luther King Jr. was rejected from obtaining a concealed carry permit (Winkler, 2011). This history is important to consider when looking at the gun control debate today because we historically favor regulation of guns in relation to disarming Black citizens, but we balk at taking weapons as a result of crimes committed by white individuals.
The calls to action over white, male rampage shooters bear little resemblance to the calls to action over gun violence in urban areas. Current legislative actions are focused on specific guns like AR-15 rifles used in school shootings, but they neglect the .45 caliber handguns used in most gun violence. They also completely disregard the 79% of gun crimes committed using a gun not owned by the perpetrator (Fabio, Duell, Creppage, O’Donnell and Laporte, 2016). Mayor Oliver Gilber of Miami Gardens stated the inefficiencies in the current gun reform goals, “I wanted to remind people: the symptoms of not having good gun control is a mass murder, but it’s also a murder, after a murder, after a murder— one at a time. And those shootings are happening across our community every day” (Green, 2018.) By only focusing our attention on one kind of gun violence, we only fix part of the problem. By providing visibility to movements in all communities, more comprehensive steps can be taken to prevent not only rampage shootings but other forms of gun violence as well.
The March For Our Lives movement is forcing the United States of America to begin to think about gun violence in our society. The Parkland activists even began a 60-day bus tour on June 15 to continue the work they started and to help young folk register to vote (Associated Press, 2018). The “March for Our Lives: Road to Change” tour will start with the Parkland activists joining with the Peace March in Chicago, led by students at St. Sabina Academy (Associated Press, 2018); centering gun violence in Chicago. These students understand how universal the trauma caused by gun violence is. As Emma Gonzalez, one of the Parkland students wrote on Twitter, “People of color in inner-cities and everywhere have been dealing with this for a despicably long time, and the media cycles just don’t cover the violence the way they did here.” “The platform us Parkland Students have established is to be shared with every person, black or white, gay or straight, religious or not, who has experienced gun violence, and hand in hand, side by side.” (As found in Green, 2018.) No student, regardless of demography or geography should fear gun violence in their schools. Yet, until we give visibility to all gun control movements and recognize the disparities in how we treat victims and perpetrators of gun violence, we will never find a solution to this violence in the United States, putting all communities at risk of further traumatization by acts of violence committed by people who have access to firearms.
References
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Katie Bateman is a doctoral candidate in Curriculum and Instruction, focusing on Science Education at Penn State University. She is a former middle school science teacher and informal science educator, with specialization in urban education and holds a BS in Marine Science and an M.Ed. in Elementary Education. Her current research interests include Earth Science education, learning progression development, and how science curricular practices are impacted by educational policies tied to standardized testing and accountability measures. She is the Technical Chair for the AJE Forum.
Jonathan (JD) McCausland is a PhD student in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus in Science Education at Penn State University. He is a former high school science teacher who served New York City’s “overage and under-credited” population and holds an M.Ed. from Brooklyn College. His current research interests surround preservice teacher education as well as understanding the experiences and policies affecting the success of “overage and under-credited” students and their teachers.
