Letters to the Editor
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All that surprising?
"But professor Niwa is right: When race enters the equation -- when the perpetrator of a crime of this type is black, like "Beltway Snipers" John Allen Muhammad and his ward Lee Boyd Malvo, or Asian, like Cho -- it rises to the surface and stays there, prompting inevitable discussions about whether "black rage" or "immigrant alienation" were somehow to blame; whether in some fundamental fashion, color of skin, shape of eye, or nation of origin lie at the seething, secret heart of such tragedies."
Is this really all that suprising? I recall on my own campus how different ethnicities gladly set up racially-based groups to promote the idea of a unique-yet-shared experience common only to that ethnic group, as opposed to the mainstream (read: white) experience. I don't see such groups as a problem, nor their analysis as flawed. But when ethnic groups themselves spend so much time perpetuating the idea of difference, should it really be surprising when the mainstream media acknowledges this, and asks whether these differences were involved in the behavior of a member of the group?