If Terry Schiavo wasn't white and kind of pretty...

[tomreedtoon]

...and if her condition hadn't been caused by her desperate diet, in an attempt to "look better" and please men...

...would there be as much of a groundswell of right-wing Christian support to keep her alive? Can you see people like Peggy Noonan fighting this hard to keep a black or Hispanic woman alive, especially one who didn't meet conventional standards of beauty?

I also haven't seen a groundswell of non-white faces in those protests on the news each night. Maybe they have issues that are more immediate on their minds, like trying to get food that's not in a tube in the mouths of their families.

[ewagner]

How hard did Peggy fight

for that little black child in Texas last week?

oh, that's right, she didn't...my bad....

[goclark]

1. yep

[kaitykaity]

2. Jon Benet Ramsey, Chandra Levy,

Jessica Lynch, Laci Petersen.

You betcha. The media has been full of these type
of stories. When a little black girl disappear there's
no coverage.

[TwilightZone]

7. Elizabeth Smart, Dru Sjodin

The list continues.

[nonconformist]

3. I think the lack of attention on the Native American school shooting

Speaks volumes and answers your question.

[TwilightZone]

4. Agreed.

As I said in another post, two white kids shoot up a school in a well-off area of Denver, and it's 24/7 coverage for days (or weeks or months).

A Native American kid shoots up a school on a reservation and it's an afterthought.

[latteromden]

5. I agree, but I beg to differ with what you said about

her diet. She obviously had a loving husband (no need to please men), and eating disorders are about much more than "looking good."

But that's beside the point, and there's no chance that these people would even pay any attention to, well, ANY minority in her situation.

[tubbacheez]

6. Racism shouldn't play a role in sympathy, but it does.

The effects of racism are real because we (collectively as a society) make them real. We make them real by the way were treat people... be it consciously, habitually, or unconsciously.


Race itself derives its boundaries from our own arbitrary definitions. Nature only codes our traits (like skin color, hair texture, nose shape, etc.).

It's we humans who draw the hard lines between Race X and Race Y.








Is race real? Check this out.

http://www.pbs.org/race/001_WhatIsRace/001_00-home.htm

[Guitarman]

8. If she suddenly wakes up...

and then proclaims to be a lesbian Muslim. Just watch as the holier than everyone's crowds heads all explode.

[Stand and Fight]

9. Precisely...

I was talking to a fellow DUer/co-worker about this very thing not even an hour ago. We both agreed that this would very much NOT be the case if she was not a white female. It's an ugly part of America's mentality.