 |
| Elliot Rodger |
IF ELLIOT RODGER hated anybody, it was himself.
I've avoided commenting on the shootings at Isla Vista where Elliott Rodgers went on a rampage because a lot of people with more expertise on the topic wrote tons of material trying answer the question of "Why?"
Why would someone who -- on the outside-looking-in -- had "everything?" Why kill six people, wound a dozen others then kill himself? He came from an upper-income family, drove an expensive BMW, was going to a good university which would normally give him a good foundation for success. If he wanted to, he already had his foot in the door if he wanted to enter the entertainment industry because his father was in the motion picture industry, which allowed the young Rogers to occasionally rub shoulders with the rich and famous.
Immediately after the carnage, pundits wrote about white male entitlement, mysogyny (hatred of women), mental illness, when, truthfully, all of them were part of the reason that led a young man to go on a shooting spree, stab his roommates and run down several others with his car.
To this list, I'd like to add one more: Rodgers was a white-guy wannabe.
Very few writers mentioned that Rodgers was biracial, with an Asian mother and a white father. In his hate-filled screeds found in his computer and a delusional manifesto, he often referred to himself as "Eurasian" and considered himself a cut above those who considered themselves as 100% people of color.
At the same time, he saw himself "less" than his full-blooded white counterparts.
I certainly don't want to give excuses for his inexplicable and despicable behavior, but in a way, it can be argued that he was a victim of our own Euro-centric society where our ideas of beauty, power and reward derive from the standards set by our culture and perpetuated and reinforced by our media.
Only in brief spurts did anybody question the idea of what and who is beautiful -- i.e. most notably the groundbreaking Black is Beautiful movement spurred by the militant 1960s, and more recently by Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong'o, who used her moment of fame during the Academy Awards to speak about her own doubts of acceptance because she didn't meet the traditional (nee caucasion-based) standards of beauty.
Rodgers especially wanted the attention of blonde women, who -- in his twisted mind -- were the ultimate gauge of his masculinity.
At this point, we need to remind ourselves of the desexualized, unassertive, wimp Asian male stereotype in American pop-culture. Although Rodgers didn't say it outright, he thought his Asian roommates were "ugly" and he had no problem stabbing them to death while they slept, thus acting out his unspoken hatred of himself, or at least that half of himself that he never could accept.
He thought that since he was half-white, he should be deserving of all the trophies of being a white male, which included sex with white women and easy access to money (he spent a fortune on lotto tickets thinking a big bankroll would give him access to acceptance by the white power structure).
Instead, his inability to reach his goals in status, sex and fortune led to his frustration and ultimately to his instability: He was a virgin, he was middle-class but not uber-wealthy and he was half-white. He seemed to ignore his Asian half but he thought he was white enough, which he believed should have given him access to the white-guys' club with all the benefits bestowed on that membership.
Like many angry white males in our society (and he considered himself more white than Asian) Rodgers thought he was entitled to certain rewards simply by his privileged standing in our society. In his twisted logic, anyone who is not white, but were obtaining those prizes that were rightly supposed to be "given" to him, only compounded his anger and drove him over the edge.
The rewards of being white have been drilled into us from the moment we are born, the books and magazines we read, the movies and TV commercials we watch, the history we are taught and the heroes we worship. It is not a simple thing to change that world-view, consciously or subconsciously, imposed on all of us -- no matter what color we are.
Only by reexamining our values, definitions of beauty and by making a conscious effort to change what we are told to believe will we, as people of color, be able to gain a sense and respect of one's self. Fortunately, that's not a new lesson. It is a well-traveled road many have had to explore in order to maintain a sense of sanity and self-worth.
The amount of melanin in our skin doesn't determine the degree of perfection, neither do almond-shaped eyes need to be surgically rounded, black hair doesn't need "highlighting;" rounded noses don't need to be pointed and ... stop being so conscious of height.
Rodgers is literally and figuratively, a person who was not comfortable in his own skin. But he is also an example of someone who allowed himself to lose himself in our culture's unrealistic standards of perfection, especially those highly imperfect benchmarks based on race or ethnicity.
-In his own words, "My Twisted World" http://abclocal.go.com/three/kabc/kabc/My-Twisted-World.pdf
-Elliot Rodger's Vlog: https://www.youtube.com/user/ElliotRodger
I've avoided commenting on the shootings at Isla Vista where Elliott Rodgers went on a rampage because a lot of people with more expertise on the topic wrote tons of material trying answer the question of "Why?"
Why would someone who -- on the outside-looking-in -- had "everything?" Why kill six people, wound a dozen others then kill himself? He came from an upper-income family, drove an expensive BMW, was going to a good university which would normally give him a good foundation for success. If he wanted to, he already had his foot in the door if he wanted to enter the entertainment industry because his father was in the motion picture industry, which allowed the young Rogers to occasionally rub shoulders with the rich and famous.
Immediately after the carnage, pundits wrote about white male entitlement, mysogyny (hatred of women), mental illness, when, truthfully, all of them were part of the reason that led a young man to go on a shooting spree, stab his roommates and run down several others with his car.
To this list, I'd like to add one more: Rodgers was a white-guy wannabe.
Very few writers mentioned that Rodgers was biracial, with an Asian mother and a white father. In his hate-filled screeds found in his computer and a delusional manifesto, he often referred to himself as "Eurasian" and considered himself a cut above those who considered themselves as 100% people of color.
At the same time, he saw himself "less" than his full-blooded white counterparts.
I certainly don't want to give excuses for his inexplicable and despicable behavior, but in a way, it can be argued that he was a victim of our own Euro-centric society where our ideas of beauty, power and reward derive from the standards set by our culture and perpetuated and reinforced by our media.
Only in brief spurts did anybody question the idea of what and who is beautiful -- i.e. most notably the groundbreaking Black is Beautiful movement spurred by the militant 1960s, and more recently by Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong'o, who used her moment of fame during the Academy Awards to speak about her own doubts of acceptance because she didn't meet the traditional (nee caucasion-based) standards of beauty.
Rodgers especially wanted the attention of blonde women, who -- in his twisted mind -- were the ultimate gauge of his masculinity.
At this point, we need to remind ourselves of the desexualized, unassertive, wimp Asian male stereotype in American pop-culture. Although Rodgers didn't say it outright, he thought his Asian roommates were "ugly" and he had no problem stabbing them to death while they slept, thus acting out his unspoken hatred of himself, or at least that half of himself that he never could accept.
He thought that since he was half-white, he should be deserving of all the trophies of being a white male, which included sex with white women and easy access to money (he spent a fortune on lotto tickets thinking a big bankroll would give him access to acceptance by the white power structure).
Instead, his inability to reach his goals in status, sex and fortune led to his frustration and ultimately to his instability: He was a virgin, he was middle-class but not uber-wealthy and he was half-white. He seemed to ignore his Asian half but he thought he was white enough, which he believed should have given him access to the white-guys' club with all the benefits bestowed on that membership.
Like many angry white males in our society (and he considered himself more white than Asian) Rodgers thought he was entitled to certain rewards simply by his privileged standing in our society. In his twisted logic, anyone who is not white, but were obtaining those prizes that were rightly supposed to be "given" to him, only compounded his anger and drove him over the edge.
The rewards of being white have been drilled into us from the moment we are born, the books and magazines we read, the movies and TV commercials we watch, the history we are taught and the heroes we worship. It is not a simple thing to change that world-view, consciously or subconsciously, imposed on all of us -- no matter what color we are.
Only by reexamining our values, definitions of beauty and by making a conscious effort to change what we are told to believe will we, as people of color, be able to gain a sense and respect of one's self. Fortunately, that's not a new lesson. It is a well-traveled road many have had to explore in order to maintain a sense of sanity and self-worth.
The amount of melanin in our skin doesn't determine the degree of perfection, neither do almond-shaped eyes need to be surgically rounded, black hair doesn't need "highlighting;" rounded noses don't need to be pointed and ... stop being so conscious of height.
Rodgers is literally and figuratively, a person who was not comfortable in his own skin. But he is also an example of someone who allowed himself to lose himself in our culture's unrealistic standards of perfection, especially those highly imperfect benchmarks based on race or ethnicity.
--------------
For more insight, link to:-In his own words, "My Twisted World" http://abclocal.go.com/three/kabc/kabc/My-Twisted-World.pdf
-Elliot Rodger's Vlog: https://www.youtube.com/user/ElliotRodger
EDITOR'S NOTE: For more commentary, observations, tips and references, follow me on Twitter @dioknoed
No comments:
Post a Comment