Tag Archive for "violence"

Posts Tagged violence

How inner city gun violence is a gendered issue

2013, following the trend set in the latter half of last year, has been the year of the glock. Everybody, and their mama, is talking about gun violence and gun control laws. Guns, guns, guns. I think it’s safe to say that we’ve been hearing about gun violence in two extremely different contexts. On the one hand, there are the isolated, mass shootings like the Colorado theater and Sandy Hook school incidents. And on the other hand, there are the shootings in inner cities, mostly communities of color. I want to clarify now that I am talking about the latter. I do not think that the deaths of shooting victims in either kind of shooting are more ...

2013, following the trend set in the latter half of last year, has been the year of the glock. Everybody, and their mama, is talking about gun violence and gun control laws. Guns, guns, ...

By zerlina • 11 years ago

Quentin Tarantino is trolling you and “Django Unchained” is awesome for what it is

If you found yourself upset about the new movie “Django Unchained,” your first mistake was probably listening to anything Quentin Tarantino said about his new film before it premiered. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Tarantino claimed his new movie “Django” is more authentic than the classic miniseries Roots and I’m here to tell you that Tarantino is out here trolling you, and it’s working.

He’s baiting folks like Spike Lee and other critics of the film, who find Tarantino’s portrayal of slavery “disrespectful.” By comparing his film to “Roots,” Tarantino is simply creating controversy, so that more people go see the movie, and it’s totally working as “Django” has made $64 million in a few weeks time.

First ...

By Lori Adelman • 11 years ago

The Wednesday Weigh-In: How are we doing in the aftermath of Sandy Hook?

Today’s post is technically more of a check-in than a weigh-in. But I hope in light of recent events you’ll forgive my semantic oversight.

We’ve covered the Sandy Hook shooting with heavy hearts.

Today, the Daily Beast and others are pointing out that our responses to the shooting have been gendered. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, for example, found that women are more likely than men to view the shootings as reflecting broader societal problems in American society, by 54% to 37%. In contrast, men express the opposite view: 51% say that shootings like this “are just the isolated acts of troubled individuals.”

While many of us ...

Today’s post is technically more of a check-in than a weigh-in. But I hope in light of recent events you’ll forgive my semantic oversight.

We’ve covered the Sandy Hook shooting with heavy ...

By Maya Dusenbery • 11 years ago

The Wednesday Weigh-In: Trigger Warning Edition

Everyone go read Roxane Gay’s piece about trigger warnings and the illusion of safety:

There are things that rip my skin open and reveal what lies beneath but I don’t believe in trigger warnings. I don’t believe people can be protected from their histories. I don’t believe it is at all possible to anticipate the histories of others in ways that would be satisfying for anyone.

There is no standard for trigger warnings, no universal guidelines. Once you start, where do you stop? Does the mention of the word rape require a trigger warning or is the threshold an account of a rape? How graphic does an account of abuse need to be before meriting a warning? Are trigger warnings required ...

Everyone go read Roxane Gay’s piece about trigger warnings and the illusion of safety:

There are things that rip my skin open and reveal what lies beneath but I don’t believe in trigger warnings. I don’t believe ...

By Eesha Pandit • 11 years ago

Are men more violent?

The gruesome and violent tragedy in Colorado last week put some noticeable strains on the national psyche. Interestingly, many facts were clear early on: a young, white man planned and perpetrated a shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, CO during the screening of a summer blockbuster. The violence appears to have been both premeditated and random (in that no specific people were targeted, as far as we know) and it has captured our imaginations.

The questions that the media asked were immediately about motive: who is James Holmes and why would he do this? The obsession with the particulars of Holmes’ life is understandable as we aim to understand and rationalize violence of a seemingly random nature. But others, concerned ...

By Samhita • 11 years ago

Youth dating violence impacting even younger teens

Over a decade ago we learned it was young people (age 16-24) that endured the highest rates of dating violence which catapulted a variety of programs in an effort to decrease the disastrous rates with which young people were experiencing intimate partner violence. Ten years later it appears little has changed. The Center for Disease Control found that today 1 in 10 teenagers still experience dating violence. And some research suggests that teens as young as 11 and 12 have experienced dating violence.

According to the New York Times, this new data has caused many intervention programs to target even younger youth–educating those as young as 11 about the impacts of teen dating violence.

Esta Soler, president of Futures Without Violence, a ...

By Eesha Pandit • 12 years ago

CLPP 2012: Colonized Spaces, Criminalized Bodies

At this year’s Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program Conference, “From Abortion Rights to Social Justice” at Hampshire College I attended a really engaging workshop that addressed the vital intersections created by the ongoing legacies of colonialism. The aim was to address the impacts of aggressive over-policing of communities of color and criminalization of poor people, immigrants, and sexual minorities. This workshop did something that many workshops at reproductive justice conferences try desperately to accomplish – an intersectional approach to seemingly disparate issues.

The anchoring theme was the notion that the very presence and existence of certain bodies is certain spaces are criminalized. This criminalization is done via our institutions: legal, medical, political social, cultural.

Katie McKay Bryson, the moderator of the workshop ...

By Chloe Angyal • 12 years ago

“Do I look suspicious?”

Students at the historically Black college Howard University have put together this beautiful little video about racial profiling and the assumption that any man of colour in a hoodie is suspicious.

In light of the comments about how Trayvon Martin’s clothing was as much to blame for his death as the man who killed him, many people have been making the point that any man of colour is considered suspicious in America, regardless of what he’s wearing. As one of my friends said, “It’s not about the clothes. It’s never about the clothes.” As the men of Howard explain so succinctly and beautifully, it’s about racial profiling.

Students at the historically Black college Howard University have put together this beautiful little video about racial profiling and the assumption that any man of colour in a hoodie is suspicious.

In light of the comments about how ...