I'm appalled to read of the actions of two teenage girls in England.
Two teenage girls have been charged with snatching a seven-month-old baby boy from his sister’s arms and throwing him under a double-decker bus.
The two 14-year-old girls were arrested in the aftermath of the attack on Tavish Dabedeen, who was allegedly snatched from his 13-year-old sister’s arms and hurled under the oncoming bus in Croydon.
. . .
Baby Tavish miraculously escaped with just minor injuries and bruising after the driver of the bus just managed to avoid him as he landed on the road outside the train station.
It was reported at the time that the two teenagers approached Tavish’s mum and sister - who were not named - before allegedly hurling racial abuse at them.
One of the girls is then alleged to have grabbed little Tavish from his sister’s arm and thrown him into the road in front of the bus.
Bystanders looked on in horror as the terrified family tended to the baby, who sustained injuries to his head and torso but who is believed to have made a full recovery.
There's more at the link.
This would leave me speechless, but for the fact that similar behavior is reported from all over the world on a routine basis. Three white men drag a Black man to death in chains behind their pickup truck in Texas . . . Black South Africans lynch illegal immigrants (also Black) from other African nations . . . Turkish workers in Germany face violence from neo-Nazi groups . . . racist attacks in Russia against non-Russians are said to be endemic . . . the list goes on and on. Anywhere there are those who are 'different' from the norm - racially, linguistically, in their religion, whatever - they seem to be at greater risk of being targeted by those who are pathologically insecure, clinging for their self-esteem to misguided and inaccurate myths about racial or religious or cultural superiority. It's even apparent in everyday discussion in America, where far too many of those who should know better blame the entire Islamic religion and culture for the actions of one pathologically evil man and his followers on 9/11/2001. People who would never dream of labeling someone a 'nigger' or a 'kike' or a 'spic' won't hesitate to speak of 'Mooslims' and denigrate anyone who follows Islam as being at least in principle, if not in practice, an enemy.
What to do with these young women? Is it possible to change their racism at this late stage of their development, or are they irretrievably set in their mindless, stupid, xenophobic ways? If it would help to change them, or those who shaped and formed their attitudes, I'd be happy to lock them away for a decade or two, but it won't help, of course. The damage has already been done.
Thanks be to God that the child is relatively uninjured. That's the only good news in this whole tragedy.
Peter
5 comments:
Or is race a cover for sociopathy? I am opposed to "hate-crime" legislation because assault is assault, murder is murder no matter what reason is going through the attacker's head. But I wonder if these two . . . females . . . felt that by going after someone who looked or acted different from the rest of the bus passengers, they would be protected or at least slow down any attempt to stop them from killing the child? I ask because I was peripherally involved in something where that was used as a "defense" by the attacker, even though the victim was much better known and liked in the community than he was. The folks around the assault didn't buy the justification by the known bully/jerk/slimeball and acted appropriately (IMHO).
LittleRed1
Yeah them/us evil caucasians are the cause of all the world's problems. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP. I suggest you google up "white polar bear hunting".
I agree with Little Red in that there should be no hate crime legislation. Hate crime = thought police. Murder is murder, assault is assault, robbery is robbery, etc. Motive doesn't matter, the crime itself matters. If a defendant is found to have acted cruelly and maliciously in the commission of the crime, a harsher penalty should be imposed, but why it was committed is ultimately irrelevant.
I'm a bit confused. Are the kid and parents Semitic or Indian and the two teenagers white? The story doesn't say beyond a few names.
In defense of the Texas incident you mentioned, that was 20 years or more ago and two of the three men were given the death penalty. We don't tolerate that sort of thing in Texas. I've heard lots of stories about things that used to happen, but all that was decades ago.
IMO, there are always going to be people who blame their problems on others and include other races in that blame (whatever race it is). It is up to the rest of us to make sure anyone who tries to act on that does not get away with it.
MechAg94
I don't think Anonymousie above actually read the post, or at least didn't read any further than the first given example. Shows his own axe to grind, I suppose.
As to the answer of "racism vs. sociopathy", why can't it be both? Take one fundamentally broken human being, add a taste for sadism, then engage targeting system which, by virtue of being human, tends to look for differences.
Part of human evolution from the common ancestor we shared with chimps and bonobos, when we were all still forest apes, may well include the same kind of vicious territoriality shown by chimps. Parties of young males will look for rival troops and will specifically target and kill their young...
Xenophobia may well be atavism as well as evil.
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