The case of Megan Williams, who was found after being tortured and raped for a week by six people (some of whom had been her "friends") has reached the national press. This horrific crime was committed by six white people who hurled racial epithets at the victim, who is black.
As always, only the bad from West Virginia makes the press, and in this case the spin will be particularly telling, as always sending cultural messages about who is and who is not a victim, who should have known better, and why we should be afraid while at the same time telling ourselves it can't happen to us because we're different than the victim.
"She should have known better. He abused her before and she went back. She was too trusting. Everybody knew those people were trouble." All of these obscure the fact that six (and possibly more) people conspired to commit a heinous crime. This morning, a local radio reporter was relaying the facts of the case, audibly shaken, and said that he had never heard of anything worse in his life.
And the worst lie that can come from the spin is that this is someone else's problem, West Virginia's problem, a hillbilly thing, it couldn't happen elsewhere (read: to us) because we're not like that, we're civilized. Like the nooses in Jena - and the copycats that have popped up elsewhere - West Virginia is no more or less capable of turning out crime. Fear and hatred, violence, racism, and misogyny are all too prevalent throughout this culture.
Not only is blaming the victom wrong in the factual and ethical senses, but it's a dangerous delusion that this kind of thing is someone else's problem and that it can't happen where we live.
Posted by binky at September 12, 2007 04:58 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Shame | West VirginiaFear and hatred, violence, racism, and misogyny are all too prevalent throughout this culture.
As is something larger and more general... sort of a mass empathy failure, for lack of a more precise term. This is where people start blaming the mass media, but I sometimes wonder if maybe they're right?
Posted by: jacflash at September 12, 2007 08:56 PM | PERMALINKI don't know if it is mass media. The point I was trying to make was that vicious seeds grow in all kinds of places, and the culture (sub?) that nurtures them is not limited to Appalachia. I am hesitant to blame culture, writ large. However I do think that there are elements of our national whatever that manifest themselves in certain individuals (and in this case, really, really dysfunctional families), regardless of whether they live in suburban New York or rural West Virginia.
Posted by: binky at September 12, 2007 09:18 PM | PERMALINK