we know from just watching the news that
most mass shootings seem to be committed
by men and research bears that out the
violence project which defines a mass
shooting as the murder of four or more
people with firearms says quote is
staggering 98 of mass shootings are
committed by men and disproportionately
by white men but one notable trend over
the years has been how white mass
shooters are often explained away as
mentally ill or a lone gunman and as dr
steven thrasher pointed out on twitter
over the weekend when
a white mass shooter is in his teens
like the 18 year old buffalo suspect
suspect they are called teenagers while
black men including those who are
victims like michael brown are called an
18 year old black man the associated
press which published those two articles
later tweeted a correction to make clear
that the buffalo suspect
is an adult joining us now is maurice
gavin campo a journalist and host of the
run tell this podcast also dr steven
thrasher professor at northwestern's
middle school of journalism mcdill
school of journalism and author of the
book coming out in august the viral
underclass the human toll when
inequality and disease collide so dr
thrasher the ap corrected his reference
to the buffalo shooter as a teenager
grateful to them for that but there is a
wider trend here of presenting black
people even when they're the victims of
gun violence as older than white people
of the same age essentially adultifying
them lay all of this out for us
certainly i had seen
a
tweet from a colleague of mine pointing
out that he was being called a teenager
when he was in fact a man and so that
made me think to go back to ferguson and
see how did the associated press
describe michael brown i was a
journalist at the time for the guardian
i traveled to ferguson i was there the
first week and i was there i've actually
been going back to st louis um a few
times a year ever since then and i saw
that not only did the associated press
describe michael brown as a black man
then um even as recently as 2020 which
is where my screenshot comes from in a
on this history on this date they were
still calling him a black man so that
made me think about both as you started
to say
the sociological ways that uh social
science has quite clearly shown that
uh white police officers even black
police officers and society in general
tend to adultify
uh black boys and black men make them
seem older than they are same thing
happens with black women research is
quite clear on that and in my own
reporting i've certainly seen with
non-binary gender non-conforming and
trans youth that happens all the time as
well um there's also perceived issues
around size all kinds of people will see
black men and think that they're bigger
than they are and that white men are
smaller than they are so this made me
think back to the way that this had
played out with michael brown and when i
first landed in ferguson my charge from
uh one of the editors i worked with was
to
um find a new angle on the story and one
of the the first things that i did was
realize that this was a child of the
community michael brown had laid out on
the pavement for four hours the people
who saw him um saw him as a as a peer as
a colleague as a not a colleague sorry
as a cousin um as a child as a
grandchild you know everyone saw this
with horror and one of the reasons the
narrative turned out differently was we
were not just relying upon a police
report saying you know quote-unquote
thug or
violent criminal we were actually
getting um first-hand accounts of people
who knew and loved him and i wrote my
first column there about a family of
five boys i think at the time they were
ages three to sixteen and i asked them
what it was like to see this friend of
theirs and someone they knew in the
community die and they really talked
about him as a child you know he had
just finished high school he hadn't
started college yet so that made me
really think about the ways that we so
often will adultify these black children
who are victims of crime and make them
seem like they're adults and then the
opposite really happened in the case
with the shooter that they are
infantilized um and one of my colleagues
really explains well how
killing black people harming black
people is part of the ways that
whiteness comes into being and part of
the way that whiteness comes into being
is enacting this kind of violence but
also whiteness comes into being as as
performing a kind of innocent so i think
that's why we see them described as kids
because this is this has to be seen as
innocence in a way to um work with
whiteness
and mara one of the things the one of
the other things that happens is a focus
on maybe today people are talking about
gun safety reforms that's fine maybe
people are talking about needs for
resources and mental health that's fine
but also the phrasing like lone gunman
lone wolf
it feels to me like black victims are
dehumanized while we work extra hard to
humanize the killers who are white in
these cases i mean speak to the ways in
which we do that and we may not even
notice that we're doing it uh at the
time
yeah well first if i can just uh give a
nod to my fellow panelists and and how
nice it is to hear that they actually
looked for members of the community to
humanize michael brown in that instance
because so often what we'll see is this
smear campaign of these victims which is
bringing up events from their past
essentially dirt from their past that
almost justifies why they deserve their
fate you know he was an addict he was a
criminal
he was a thug so it really does take a
concerted effort to portray them in a
light that is not that but when we talk
about the view as these of these white
gunmen as lone wolf what that does is it
separates them from the bigger problem
of course gun control is an issue of
course mental health is an issue but the
big problem here is white supremacist
domestic terrorism and oftentimes these
shooters will be described as a solo
actor even though they have referenced
previous white supremacist shooters in
their manifestos and this is something
that happens it's a it's a it's giving
them of the benefit of the doubt it's
not tying them to the bigger problem
it's not seeing them as much of a threat
as other groups would be so for example
law enforcement does this too we see
this in a lot of systems january 6 was
planned all but out in the open and yet
law enforcement was not ready and
waiting
it would be hard to believe that muslim
groups could get together and plan a
siege on the united states capital
openly and that law enforcement wouldn't
be better prepared for that especially
knowing that the fbi says that this
white supremacist domestic terrorism is
one of the biggest threats facing the
country and we know that there's a
history of it that this is a very real
threat the deadliest homegrown terrorist
attacks in this country's history have
been at the hands of white supremacist
domestic terrorists so these are very
real threats and you have to ask
yourself then why newsrooms and law
enforcement seem to not be taking them
as seriously as they should and i think
the question the answer to that question
is an implicit bias that this reflects
their thinking and their belief system
and they don't tend to see these men
as dangerous as they truly are
so this is an important point that leads
me to my next question um dr thrasher
because it feels like in the media we we
often ask the question okay why aren't
republicans speaking out more forcefully
against this kind of rhetoric or about
this type of tragedy um and and often
you know the explanation is well that's
what the republican base wants to hear
um but i don't feel like that's a good
enough reason
how do we marginalize the people who
actually believe this they should not be
a part of our mainstream conversation
full stop everybody should be saying
that no matter where you fall on the
political spectrum
well one of the uh challenges i think is
to understand that this is not just a
democratic or republican issue this is
something that really transcends
um all kinds of people in the united
states it goes back historically and
it's something that we all have to deal
with and and the biases in terms of what
we see with violence and perceptions
about black men certainly within police
it happens with black police officers as
well so we have to interrogate the
structures and think about how they have
to be done
um that they have to be interrogated
more carefully and part of that is
understanding that these language that
these issues about language it's not
just one editor one writer this is like
something that comes through the
hierarchy of a media organization so i
teach at a journalism school and try to
teach students about this but if they go
into jobs and their managers and the
people above them aren't doing it then
it's not going to get changed
systemically
maris
dr steven thrasher i really appreciate
you being here for this really important
conversation thank you so much please
stay safe
hi i'm zerlina maxwell thanks for
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