Blond Hair and Blue Eyes "She Had to Die"
 

I don't know why, but I couldn't find another article about this...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...070501305.html

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I saw this on the news and I believe Grant had been convicted of some sort of sexual crime and had been released into the community after serving some time.

Anyway, I understand his desperation and where he's coming from...he commented that he did this to make a statement and he wanted the death penalty. But, it would seem more reasonable to take down someone who was more directly involved in what he was acting out against - though he did say that no white person is innocent.

They say he allowed a Latina woman and an elderly white woman pass by before he chose Carriero who was an upper class woman in her 50s. He was looking for someone who was living a typical white lifestyle.

Like I said, I understand where he's coming from but murder is not the answer. The LAST thing they need to do is fulfill his desire for the death penalty after which he would be a martyr for people who think like he does.

Is this PHAShriner?

-Rudey

You understand where he is coming from? :confused: How so (in turns of being frustrated with whites, being oppressed, mad enough to murder someone, etc.) ?

Just trying to get a handle on your sympathy for a murderer(and a senseless murder at that) who wanted to kill people like yourself.

Re: Blond Hair and Blue Eyes "She Had to Die"
 

How quaint.

What a sick b*stard!

I'm sorry...I gotta vote for frying his ass! I got no sympathy for him or his so called "excuse"

My godson has blond hair and blue eyes, as does his brother & sister. They all live in CA. The school that they go to is heavily black and/or Latino - so much so, that they are literally the only kids with blond hair and blue eyes.

Unfortunately, instead of this being the wonderful learning experience that it should have been, the boys were coming home every day with black eyes & other bruises, while the girl was emotionally withdrawn. The school district suggested that they change schools, and refused to call the parents of the main instigators in for a conference!

I feel very badly about this. These three kids were supposed to be immersed in tolerance, but the school made it a bad experience. They're being homeschooled now, and are going to a racially diverse church. Their mother is so afraid of them not being tolerant (their father is terminally ill).

And I don't know why I felt the need to share this, other than the article just reminded me of their situation...

Re: Blond Hair and Blue Eyes "She Had to Die"
 

How in the world does someone understand where someone like this is coming from? Someone with enough rage to just randomly kill another person simply because of skin tone, hair color or eye color?

I don't understand how anyone could do that, regardless of race and I sure in the heck don't understand where they are coming from. There is no justification at all.

Re: Re: Blond Hair and Blue Eyes "She Had to Die"
 

Well, I'll give my perspective. Imagine you live in an area where no one looks like you. You are stared at, ridiculed for your features, told you are ugly, worthless, less than a human being. You go to restaurants and stores and are either treated like a thief or ignored. People cross to the other side of the street when they see you. You are called names, harrassed, spit on, maybe even beaten.

Many of these things have happened to me, and lots of other minorities in this country. I am NOT excusing his behavior, because killing someone is WRONG no matter what the excuse. But I do understand his sense of frustration in a world that treats many people as second class citizens.

And this is not the first time in history that people have been killed because of their appearance. And its sad that all those times occured as well.

I hate to "go there," but why do I sense that there would have been a much greater outrage if the situation had been reversed?

Regardless, any racially motivated hate crime IS a hate crime, and I don't see how ANYONE should be able to "understand where he's coming from" or justify it in their minds.

Unfortunately, there are bad apples in every bunch that ruin things for everybody.

I really don't want to get involved in a race discussion, but what exactly constitutes the 'typical white lifestyle'...should I be living it because I'm white?

Re: Re: Re: Blond Hair and Blue Eyes "She Had to Die"
 

"Excuse: to serve as a reason or cause or justification of; "Your need to sleep late does not excuse your late arrival at work"; "Her recent divorce amy explain her reluctance to date again" "

No, it sounds like you're excusing it.

-Rudey

If a white person lynched a black person because he was black, nobody would try and find a reason/excuse for it because they knows it's absolutely disgusting.

-Rudey

Not true. People have justified lynchings for years, making it a "family outing" instead of a horrible act. Ever seen pics of families with picnic baskets and man hanging from a tree?

They are called racist ASAP.

You can reason through it, make excuses, or go so far as taking pictures, but at the end of the day there's a pretty solid line in the sand on this one.

-Rudey

I agree...

Did I say I understand why he killed someone? NO.

But I understand the feelings of anger and pain at being a second class citizen. But that DOES NOT justify killing someone, which is said before.

Wrong is wrong no matter how you try to justify it.

So basically you're like the lawyer for those teenagers that shoot their parents and say they were abused?

It's not right, but you understand their anger and hope to explain it?

-Rudey

Not at all, its not my job or goal to explain anything.

I can understand why a poor mother would steal food for her child. Does that mean that I think its ok for her to steal? No.

Understanding something and believing its ok are two different things.

At the end of the day, people are responsible for their own actions. Its not my job to justify it. I just simply made the comment that I recognize and have shared the experience of being treated badly because of my race. Do I go around being mean to people? No.

I'm just saying it has no relevance to the fact that he did it and is a sympathy play.

But then again, I want there to be no shades of gray on this.

And if the roles were reversed, someone reasoning that a white man lynched a black man because he is fighting a race war and doesn't like black people using the same public bathrooms, would be called a racist. I guess that's black and white with no room for gray.

-Rudey

Re: Re: Re: Blond Hair and Blue Eyes "She Had to Die"
 

For anyone who was wondering about my comments, this is exactly what I meant.

I guess.

I mean for real, how do yall get all that from those few lines? Seriously, this man could have felt compelled to say this for more reasons than we could think of.... (Suzy white girl turned him down for a date, so he's pissed, trying to avoid going to jail or receiving the death penalty for his actions so he goes the insanity route, just plain ol' crazy, etc.).

I just don't buy his reasoning, so it will be interesting to see how his case pans out.

I don't see the world as the world sees me. I don't identify well as "caucasian" because "my people" are all my brothers and sisters in Christ.

I understand where he is coming from meaning that I know what's it's like to have horrible things happen to you and you can't do anything about it. All you can do is scream in your mind and get more and more angry. When you've been consumed by anger on any level, you can certainly have a sense of what people like this guy are feeling when they commit their acts of horror.

But, most of us have a shut off switch that keeps us from actually following through with murder or rape or other vile crimes. If you don't know what it is to be this angry, it just means that you haven't had the misfortune of reaching that level of all-consuming emotion.

I watched this story on the news so I saw a bit more than what the article describes - which is why in my first post, I expressed surprise that there wasn't more coverage of the event. That little article was all I could find on it.

That is nice, let Your Beleif do your thinking!:(
Maybe not your Color.

Well, there are becoming ,more and more non-segregated Areas, Da!:rolleyes:

Basically the reason people dont like people is because of Economics.

I do not care what people want to call other people, if you act like an ass then be treated like an ass.:mad:

What Color does it matter?:confused:

Get over Your Whiteness or Blackness, or what the hell ever!

Do you walk on two legs and speak with a Language compared to other Species?:rolleyes:

Oh, That is called HomoSapiens! Da People, Us!:rolleyes:

Re: Re: Re: Re: Blond Hair and Blue Eyes "She Had to Die"
 

No one was wondering, although you have other things you could probably address.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Blond Hair and Blue Eyes "She Had to Die"
 

Honeykiss was. What other things could I address?

Any and All?

Murder is wrong, regardless of the reasons.

However, I don't think that identifying with the fustrations of being treated like a 2nd class citizen means that you excuse the actions of a murderer. It just means you understand their frustration. Why does it have to taken to mean more than that?

Thank you sister-Greek!

Right, but not identifying as "caucasian" doesn't mean that you're not caucasian. You can be white and still concerned about the plight of people of color in this country.

I'm not saying that society doesn't see me as white or that I don't reap the benefits...I'm saying that race as a concept is terribly wrong to me, so I prefer not to identify myself racially. The problem is not that I don't want to be white...it's that I don't want to be any "color" and that's a separate issue altogether from my concern for anyone else.

And this right here drives me crazy.

Look, you're in such a huff to deny a universal truth ("we all look different") that you're perjuring yourself - you've declared that the man selected someone living the quintessential white lifestyle, but I guarantee (because you've done it in other threads) that you would roundly reject any sort of representative lifestyle for other races.

You might hate race as a concept, but you certainly seem sensitive to it. You might very well feel for this man's plight, but fucking A kids, this is the worst of the slippery slopes - the apologist angle.

And why should people be punished for living it to begin with?? I think this is a discussion I should stay out of, I'm too biased

That's why I edited what I said...I have too many opinions on this, and it's really not worth it to get into it on here. It's just another case of someone (regardless of their color) acting on stereotypes established a couple hundred years ago.

How come he didn't target a person of color living the 'white lifestyle'?

I don't think anyone here is qualified to answer that question.

Maybe you could write him in jail and get an answer.

Oh I see. Let's look up some famous klansmen that lynched some blacks and identify with their frustrations. I hope nobody tries objects to the sympathizing.

-Rudey

Good grief! I didn't say this, he did.

You know, why do you care how I prefer to see myself? I don't believe I ever said that the murder was justified. What I said was that we shouldn't give him what he wants by killing him. He's obviously gone off the deep end, so any "punishment" we try to give him won't do him or us any good.

I think violent criminals (rapists, murders, etc.) should be first psychologically evaluated to see if the punishment we give will even be a punishment to them. If it is found that they are so far out there that jail-time won't mean anything to them, they should go into a maximum security psych program until either 1) they come to their senses and realize what they've done so we can then effectively punish them or 2) they die.

We send people to jail as a form of discipline. The whole point is to put them into an uncomfortable situation so they will reconsider their paths and ultimately stop their criminal ways. Why else would we release some?

For people who are just gone mentally, what good does it do anyone to have them in a jail when society would be better served to have them placed in a program where they have a chance of understanding what they've done. That's what we're aiming for, right?

sym·pa·thy
n. pl. sym·pa·thies

-A relationship or an affinity between people or things in which whatever affects one correspondingly affects the other.
-Mutual understanding or affection arising from this relationship or affinity.

-The act or power of sharing the feelings of another.
-A feeling or an expression of pity or sorrow for the distress of another; compassion or commiseration. Often used in the plural.
-Harmonious agreement; accord: He is in sympathy with their beliefs.
-A feeling of loyalty; allegiance. Often used in the plural: His sympathies lie with his family.
-Physiology. A relation between parts or organs by which a disease or disorder in one induces an effect in the other.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

I don't think anyone here was giving excuses or justifying the act. I think you are reading too much into this.

And I'm sure there are lots of people in the world that can relate to the frustrations of a Klansman. Its not the same as excusing the behavior.

BTW, the word you were looking for is empathy

em·pa·thy n.
-Identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives.
-The attribution of one's own feelings to an object.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Actually, no. I meant sympathy. I have quite the grasp on the English language, and often those that recommend words to me lack that very grasp.

Usually empathy goes beyond sympathy in the form of a shared common experience. I sympathize with a woman who has her child murdered but I cannot empathize.

"The most often quoted article on empathy comes from physician Howard Spiro. He defines empathy this way:

Empathy is the feeling that persons or objects arouse in us as projections of our feelings and thoughts. It is evident when "I and you" becomes "I am you," or at least "I might be you."

Lawyers often use this technique every time a murderer kills someone. They play to people's emotions and try to reason through it. "Johnny had a rough childhood and was molested so that is why he grew to hate authority figures and killed these middle aged women."

And of course there are plenty of people that connect with klansmen and reason through the fact that they don't like Blacks; they are labeled racists.

-Rudey

Actually, you just proved my point. No one in this thread gave a statement that meets the definition of sympathy. Therefore, sympathy was the wrong word to use in your attack on those who choose to give an opinion that you don't like.

As for the lawyer thing...hey, whatever works. But like I said before, there is NO justification for murder. Its always wrong.

If that's what you want to do.:confused: