Tag Archives: gabrielle giffords

The Color of Murder

So, I just want to make sure I have the rules down correctly.

When a brown-skinned person kills a bunch of people or makes what seems to be a politically motivated assassination attempt, he or she is evil and cruel and heartless and should be punished to the full extent of the law.

When a white person who isn’t completely at the ass end of the socioeconomic spectrum does the same thing, we have to soften the impact of the law by pointing out that he or she must be mentally ill.

When the person is yellow or a poor white, we’re not sure, but we lean toward option number two anyway.

Have I got that about right?

Because Jared Lee Loughner seemed functional enough to get through life and, I presume, to know that indiscriminately mowing people down in a hail of gunfire to get to your target is even more wrong than killing one person. Funny that I can’t recall any cases of Latinos or African-Americans (and definitely NOT Middle Eastern folks) getting the same level of forgiveness.

Sorry, Jared’s a terrorist in my view, and a murderer. You’re gonna have a hard time convincing me he was that disassociated from reality. And even if he was, why don’t people of color get credit for being abused, raised in horrible post-traumatic-stress inducing environments and the like?

Make the playing field fair.

Choose one route or the other, and leave the skin color out of it.