Black men are angry, Muslims are terrorists, and White men are______?

by Dr. Samori Swygert

One of the most frequently frustrating labels to me is the “angry black man”. I detest and abhor it. American society has persistently found a way to stigmatize and bastardize the black male image. The media has utilized their cinematic, audio-visual apparatus to stereotype black men for ages.

My Issue With Subjective Media Labeling of Black Men

I harbor such disdain for this label because often times, black men aren’t angry. When black men decide to vocalize opinions or feelings, society chooses to equate our expressions with hostility. When we refrain from speaking, then we are pushed over, ignored, and considered docile, unsure, and “feckless.” This places black men in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” dynamic.

Much is said about black men. However, it’s almost taboo to truly address, and more importantly, create a label for white men. America has been ducking and ignoring this conversation for a long time.

See, it’s okay for the news outlets to call black men gangsters, thugs, hoodlums, and menaces to society whenever there is a gang shootout or random inner-city murder. Yes, it’s easy, expected, and convenient to slap these negative monikers, and other stereotypical nomenclatures on us.

However, when white males commit ghastly and atrocious murders, the conversation shifts to mental health, support, and help. When has the media considered mental health as a contributing factor in murders committed by black men? The answer is very few and far between. I can only think of Colin Ferguson (the Long Island Railroad shooter) and the Washington Navy Yard shooter. You can’t even say John Muhammad because it was ruled that in his case it was a well orchestrated and methodical plot.

A Probable Theory

I think that many white men who have committed “mass murderous acts” are mentally ill, but I also believe there are other confounding variables that America dismisses. It’s my opinion that many of these white male mass murderers suffer from a trifecta of issues: 1) mental illness 2) belief in white supremacy 3) belief in white privilege.

I think all three fuel and feed each other. I’ve carefully listened to, and replayed Elliot Rodger’s video before he committed his murders in Santa Barbara, California. These three themes were recurrent throughout the video.

The media persistently conducts a smear campaign that ultimately propagandizes black men as criminals. However, this is not entirely true or close to the truth. Just as all white men aren’t mass murderers, all black men aren’t gangsters, thugs, pimps, and players. American society needs to get familiar with its black male constituency and quit the disparaging imagery and rhetoric, unless it chooses to come to grips with the atrocities that certain demographics of white males commit. The black community is chock full of doctors, lawyers, business men, scientists, Ph.D’s, inventors, and just all around stand up honest hardworking black men.

This demonizing imagery has contributed to the placement of multitudes of black men into the cross hairs of police, which results in daily targeted harassment and stop and frisk-type policing. This also happened to Muslim Americans after 9/11. Sectors of African American men and Muslims become the poster-child for the whole group, but this doesn’t apply to white men. Why?

If you’re white and reading this, think about how many cool, respectable, honest, hardworking, intelligent black men you work with and are friends with. Does that friend resemble anything of the street thugs that pop up in media mugshots? I doubt it.

How Does White Privilege Play a Role In These Murders?

The focusing on black males and Muslims has allowed white males to go unchecked and allows them to accomplish the most unimaginable and horrific schemes in American history. This occurs because local authorities are distracted on young men with sagging pants and a hoodie, or a man in a turban with a full beard.

Just think for a moment…….Would a Muslim man by the name of Abdul Hasan Fareed be able to order thousands of rounds of ammunition and high powered assault rifles online without the government knocking on his door? We already know the answer to that. However, this is how many of these mass shooting killers acquired their ammo and firearms (online).

Elliot Rodger felt compelled to kill people because he was denied sëxual experiences. His family is worth millions of dollars from the film industry. The dynamic of white privilege allowed Elliot Rogers to commit these heinous murders. The Alta Vista cops say they were aware of the videos and threats but they failed to make a full intervention. Why? They said he appeared to be okay. Yet, you have a person saying that he would “make a mountain of skulls, and a river of blood”, and “go into the sorority house and kill every girl.” Why would you not take death threats serious, or at least give the due diligence to notify the college campus and the sorority house about these threats?

I have some questions: If Elliot Rodger was a Muslim and made these type of threats, would his video be ignored? If Elliot Roger was a Muslim, would the police inquiry simply stop at a doorstep wellness interview? Eliot Rodger was given the benefit of the doubt and that doubt resulted in multiple murders and injuries. However, we have innocent Muslims that have a whole NYPD task squad dedicated to dissecting each fabric of their lives (and they haven’t made one threat).

How Can White Supremacy Contribute to Mental Illness?

What happens to a person that believes that they are better and superior to all races, and then discovers that they aren’t? When a person believes they’re smarter than another person just because of skin color, and then fails out of school, how does that person feel? When a person believes they are the most sexiest person because they are white, but can’t get a date, how does that person feel? When a person believes they’re stronger than everyone else because they’re white but loses every street fight, how does that person feel? When a person believes they are privileged because they’re white but lives in a shack, how does that person feel?

I think this creates cognitive dissonance because what they believe, and what’s reality, are two opposite realities. I think this makes the person feel like a loser, and a failure because they are not living up to a false standard placed on them. This may result in murder in some cases because the act of murder may be viewed as a final display of power and control. This false perception of achieving power through murder is a last minute validation of the power they’ve been seeking all along.

Not all of the following white male murderers and domestic terrorists fit the proposed trifecta that I mentioned. However, I think it is something to consider. I also think honesty is what’s really lacking in this conversation of violence and race. Not all black men are thugs and killers, however we do have a significant segment that engage in a lot of unscrupulous behavior. Not all white men are psychopathic in nature, but there are segments that choose to kill innocent people they don’t even know.

I say we all need to come to the table and engage in a mature, respectful, and honest conversation. This is the only way to resolve these issues. We may be surprised with what we come up with, but denial will kill us just like denying you have cancer. The ideology of white supremacy is destructive and breeds nothing but hate and division in a country that depicts itself as loving and welcoming. I also believe gun control is not the answer — a demented person will just find a different weapon to inflict pain and harm on their target.

Lastly, Mark Cuban said he would cross the street if he saw a black kid in a hoodie approaching him. Yet, he could have crossed the path of a psychopath like Elliot Rodger (who looked harmless), and Elliot Rodger could have shot him to death……..think about it.

I would like you to look at these names and events and think about them in their entirety, and research them. This is what I did prior to writing this article!

Charles Manson
Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols with the Oklahoma City Bombing,
Ted Kaczynski the “Unabomber”
Eric Robert Rudolph ( 1996 Atlanta , Georgia Olympic park bomber, antisemite and felt white people were God’s chosen people)
James Eagan Holmes ( the Colorado theatre shooter),
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (the Columbine High School shooters),
Adam Lanza (the Newtown Connecticut Elementary School shooter)
Ronald DeFeo Jr (the real life character of the Amityville Horror movie)
Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Goldman (Jonesboro, Arkansas school shooters)
Dennis Rader “The BTK killer”
Ted Bundy
Jeffrey Dahmer
David Berkowitz “the Son of Sam”
The Zodiac Killer (all survivors and authorities describe a white male)
John Wayne Gacy (killer of 33 teenage boys and basis of the movie “Gacy” and “To Catch a Killer”), Albert DeSalvo “The Boston Strangler”
Gary Ridgway “The Green River Killer” (convicted of 48 murders, and confessed to over 71 murders)
Buford O Furrow Jr (1999 Los Angeles Jewish Community Center Shooting, fired 70 shots in the center, and was a white supremacist),
Wade Michael Page ( Wisconsin Sikh temple shooter, killing 6 and injuring 4 Sikh parishioners)
Douglas Williams (The Lockheed Martin Plant Shooting, where 14 coworkers were shot with a shotgun)
John List (planned and executed the murder of his own mother, wife, and 3 children),
Charles Whitman (engineering student that killed 13 people, and injured 32 others from the observation deck of the University of Texas tower)
Jared Loughner (shot congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in the head, killed 6 others, and injured 12 other attendees to a political event)
George Hennard ( the mass murderer in Killeen, Texas that drove his truck through the front of a cafeteria and shot 43 people and then killed himself)
“Whitey”Bulger,
The Tsarnaev Brothers (bombed the Boston Marathon)
Nathan Campbell (attempted multiple vehicular manslaughter on Venice Beach)
Michael Brandon Hill (went into an Atlanta elementary school with AK-47 with 500 rounds but was talked out of killing by a black staff member)
Elliot Rodger ( 22 year old Santa Barbara, California virgin mass murderer)
Frazier Glenn Cross (73 year old Kansas Jewish Center murderer)
Paul Anthony Ciancia ( 23 year old Los Angeles Airport shooter)
John David LaDue ( 17 year old in Minnesota that made bombs, had several firearms and plotted to kill his family, then set off bombs, go to school kill the security guard, chain the doors and then shoot as many kids as possible but was intercepted by a lady who called the police on suspicion)
Alex Hribal ( 16 year old Alex Hribal, stabbed 20 students and an adult in a Pittsburgh High school)
Charles Carl Roberts IV ( 32 year old male that murdered several students in an Amish school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with a Ruger Bolt action rifle, 12 gauge shotgun, and 9mm handgun)
Thomas “ TJ” Lane ( 17 year old, murders students in Chardon High school in Chardon, Ohio)
Geddy L Kramer ( 19 year old, shoots 6 coworkers in Atlanta, Georgia at a FedEx plant and kills himself)

Also I encourage knee-jerk trolls and commentors to watch this video about White Privilege by Tim Wise that radio show host Warren Ballentine recommended. This video further supports my position on Elliot Rodger, and the “angry black man” label: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN8pmhQwcnY

Remember a murder can be a “manslaughter” or another “mans-laughter.”