Bringing race and economic class into the Newtown discussion [View all]

[coalition_unwilling]

Lost amidst all the sorrow we rightly feel for the many victims of the Newtown Massacre is the reality that innocent children have been the victims of random shootings on an almost weekly basis here in Los Angeles since I've lived here (1994 and thereafter). These children are predominantly black or Latino and lower-class and, aside from the brief mentions on local news broadcasts, have never occasioned the 'stop-the-presses' full-blown meltdown that the Newtown massacre seems to have engendered.

And yet no one on DU would say for one moment that the lives of those black and Latino children are one bit less precious than the lives of the child victims of the Newtown Massacre.

I'd like for DU to understand that this type of violence that makes victims of children has long been a staple of minority neighborhoods here. I live in a racially mixed neighborhood in Los Angeles (Ladera Heights) and I can tell you for a fact that the black and Latino children I've met here (some of whom live in my building) are just as cute, precious and precocious as the children who died at Newtown.

I mention this not to criticize DU, nor to besmirch the memories of the victims of the Newtown Massacre. Maybe I'm just asking myself where the media coverage and the outrage was when the children of South Central LA were being gunned down. I can't help escape the feeling that there are some racial and economic class biases at play here. And that the public outpourings of grief and outrage themselves reveal some deep societal dysfunctions.