• Pingback: Critical Mass Progress | CI: ‘Whiteness’, Criminality, and Double-Standards of Deviance/Social Control()

  • Pingback: Dangerous White Dreams, #BreakingBad | Susan Sered()

  • Getting here way late, everyone.  But props to Nancy for breaking this down. ::Standing Ovation::  

    •  @Seeta thanks seeta :)
       
      always appreciate the opportunity

  • As expected — Aurora shooting suspect’s defence lawyers say Holmes is mentally ill
     
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/09/aurora-shooting-suspect-mentally-ill
     
    “Attorneys for the suspect in the Colorado movie theater shootings said Thursday their client is mentally ill and that they need more time to assess the nature of his illness.
     
    James Holmes’ lawyers made the disclosure at a court hearing in suburban Denver where news media organisations were asking a judge to unseal court documents in the case….
     
    Defence attorney Daniel King made the revelation about Holmes as he argued defence attorneys need more information from prosecutors and investigators to assess their client.
    “We cannot begin to assess the nature and the depth of Mr Holmes’ mental illness until we receive full disclosure,” he said.

    • rubyr

       @nancy a heitzeg Every since I read this piece, I have been trying to think of even one POC who committed a crime and whose defense was mental illness. I know that they must exist but I cannot think of  even one instance.  This will not change until every person who cares takes a stand and follows in the footsteps of Nancy and others who are trying to reveal this injustice to the world. 

  • Richard Lyon

    That is an excellent job of pulling complex information together. I spent the first half of my working like in the mental health field. I was always fascinated by trying to follow the convoluted dynamics that determined what happened to  a particular individual who had gotten in trouble. Some get labeled mentally ill/disabled and sent down that road others get branded as criminals. the medical “technology” involved is mostly about the bias and privilege that you have described.  

    •  @Richard Lyon thank you Richard
       
      “:convoluted dynamics” is such a na apt description
       
      and thanks for being here

  • Domino14

    In agreement with everyone else here. Thumbs up.  .. and thanks for including the conversation with your colleague – made more of a point for me too.

  • princss6

    Well done, Nancy. I shared it with the Martin family attorneys on twitter. 

  • rubyr

    Nancy — This is just brilliant!! It is so hard to understand racism and bigotry but this piece helps to make sense of it. As always, thank you so much for all of your very hard work. 
     
    Deepest respect. 

  • trashablanca

    Funny, I can’t past a youtube link here. I hand typed it, but I typed the colon after http as a semicolon. If you type in Graham Nash Chicago, it’s the first one listed, a music video project for a history class, that was well done, imo.

  • trashablanca

    Excellent “rant” Nancy!
     
    I’m still trying to process the millions of white Xtian men, who despise financial criminal Mitt Romney, yet will vote for him, over the Kenyan communist, fascist pinko, President Barack Obama. He has a proven record of competence, in spite of utter GOP intransigence, yet, he’s too black and foreign for my racist white cohort.
     
    We were going to change the world :::sigh:::

    •  @trashablanca it is hard to comprehend the detour from Woodstock :(

      • trashablanca

         @nancy a heitzeg Great song, Nancy. I have never seen that video before. Thanks!
         
        This is the song that was playing in my head when I wrote my comment, though: http;//www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEFsBF1X1ow&feature=colike

    • KayWhitlock

       @trashablanca “Get tough” and accelerated processes of criminalization happened; that’s what derailed forward momentum.  That and COINTELPRO. You think we’d learn.

  • I am on and off for awhile here — headed to teach my last Environmental Justice article of the summer!
     
    Yea!
     
    will be back soon — thanks

  • KayWhitlock

    This:  “Let me be clear. I am not calling for increased criminalization of white people. CI stands for Abolition, and calls for transformative justice as an alternative to mass incarceration. Nor am I suggesting that the psychiatry does not have a place — just that the current over-diagnosis driven pharmacological soup does not. Our current systems of social control have failed to make us safer or saner and in fact, both the medical industrial complex and the prison industrial complex are just soaking our fears and insecurities, appealing to/upholding white privilege for massive profit. That is what they are intended to do — dope us up, lock us up, divide up us, cha-ching!!”
     
    Exceptional, Nancy.  Much gratitude.
     
    Oh – and over on another (white) blog, I saw speculation about, gosh, why the Sikh temple killings have not gotten as much attention/media coverage as Aurora.  After saying, well, some say it’s the number of dead people, but maybe not, they sort of settled in on “Well, most people can’t imagine themselves inside a Sikh temple, whereas they can imagine themselves in a suburban movie theater.”   They also speculate that it’s “when the news drop comes.”
     
    Talk about the white racial frame. 

    •  @KayWhitlock Thnk you Kay
       
      Sigh — that quote about the movies just sums it all up..
       
      Let’s not mention the troublesome ties to white power groups which make this a little more challenging tor “whiteness”
       
      Still heard the immediate cries of PSTD!! which they heard he was a vet howvere

      • KayWhitlock

         @nancy a heitzeg When the “white hate group” ties are mentioned, it’s all in a context of centrist-extremist theory (Link here:  http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/Repression-and-ideology-07.html ).  That refers to the idea that there is a vital democratic center that stands against the actions of irrational, lunatic fringe populists and dissidents.
         
        Thus, the white shooters are extremists, and we can also blame, say, Trayon Martin for his own murder by positing his wearing of a hoodie marks him as a criminal extremist.  And, Nancy, we could even accuse you and me and all our colleagues of being irrational, fringe dissidents who are “extreme” and “irrational” because we challenge the idea of this “vital democratic elite” that somehow is never guilty of violence – structural or otherwise. 

        •  @KayWhitlock So true Kay
           
          On the margins
           
          that requires which the white-washing of a long uninterrupted history of systemic violence against poc that goes to the foundation of this country

        • KayWhitlock

           @nancy a heitzeg amen.

  • So true, so true.
     
    For a world with neither cages nor violence,
    vikki

    •  @Vikki For a world with neither cages nor violence,
       
      amen vikki

  • of curse sicn ei wrote this, the Milwaukee attack occurred.
     
    White Privilege/White Power run amok :)