Her Earth Laid Open, Appalachia Reveals Her Soul

More Than A Simple Issue Of Black And White

It was a week ago when the heated “discussion” over Appalachia's Democratic primary voting patterns went from orange ember to white-hot flame. The decidedly revealing exit polling from the West Virginia primary set things off in a huge way, sending MSNBC's Pat Buchanan into paroxysms of red-faced keening that made more than a few viewers (like my stunned kids who were watching) actually fear for his health.

But it was his crazed words about what the West Virginia results “meant” that gave many pause. If you looked past the “guy-on-meth-from-an-episode-of-Cops” yelling, the point he was desperately trying to hammer home was one about Obama being in deep trouble with “hard-working, White” Americans because of the state's demographic breakdown post-the vote. The breakdown went nearly 70%/30% in a 95% White state, going against the prevailing trends—numbers that should indeed concern Obama, but can not be forced into the general election template Buchanan nearly stroked-out trying to cram it into.

It also doesn't help when allegedly more cosmopolitan states try to cast that primary in dumb, lowest-common denominator bolierplate, as shown in the following day's New York Daily News front page and main spread.


But that is the world we live in, where the three-word tag is king. The sound-bite, the five-second run-down...with no consideration of history or a desire to actually look with a discerning eye at why some things are the way they are. Consider this: West Virginia and Kentucky, and virtually everyplace else in that chain of states that form Appalalchia proper are not simply the short-hand, Cliff Notes™ snapshots we're force-fed the appearance of. Not the hard-core bastion of retrograde hate and susceptibility to the worst impulses of jingo-tastic, faux-American disregard for forward-thinking we are led to believe they are. I could see how that mask is mistaken for the region's face, thanks to people like Buchanan...

...but even cursory look at the region and what it has gone through tells the real story of why things are.

There is the very nature of the land itself. Rugged in its raw form, and rougher still through what has been done to it by man and moguls, this is a place where large corporations make mega-fortunes on ripping the very heart out of the earth and cleaving off its scalp. The coal mining industry, while not employing the huge numbers it once did, is still a major economic force in the area. With upwards of 600 open and active mines in the region, pulling out close to 300 million tons of coal every year, pitting and scarring the land as the dark manna is hauled out on the cheap, the region's workers average a paltry $25,000 per year in pay for this back-breaking hollowing out of the earth beneath them. You add in the mills that have taken up the slack, where every fiber-filled, right-to-work breath steals a little bit of a person every day, and then stir in the “legacy” economy that pays to keep alive the people who gave of their bodies for decades—pensions and stratospheric late-in-life health care costs, and you have a population dangling by its economic short and curlies. And the moguls who own and ioperate these cash-cow companies have a vested interest in keeping the area's population ill-educated (which lessens the opportunity to gain work beyond home), financially on eggshells and “American Dream”-starved. Were these folks to in large numbers move beyond the necessity to work in these life-stealing industiries, where-oh-where would the cheap labor come from? There simply isn't enough of an incentive for “illegals” to descend upon the mountains and snatch these jobs up. For that low level of pay (and it'd be lowered still for brown-skinned folks) and body-busting work, there would have to be more of a secondary, benign payoff than Appalachia-as-it-stands can provide. Things that many take for granted, like ease of inexpensive travel and access to the culturally familiar would work against a replacement, outsider workforce. So you have in effect, a group almost permanently chained to the corporations that call the shots in the area. That is what is called “a captive workforce”.

This is the main reason why the young leave there in droves—the limited opportunities for success compared to the rest of America. Sadly, Appalachia is not a place you think of when thoughts of making the most of the “American Dream” come to mind. And that's the way the region's controlling interests want it. Born poor, keep them poor, and said poverty keeps enough there to be used as fuel for the money machine. It's also why the voting populace skews so heavily older. These are the folks tied to home—be it by duty to family who needs them, or an inability to escape. They will be born there, live there, work there, and yes—die there.

Now, this is not to say that they are terminally morose, or constantly unhappy...or dare I say it—bitter. They most certainly are those things when times are at their hardest, as would anyone who feel the weight of clouds limiting their sight of prosperity's sky. But they get by. It doesn't consume them. They live their lives as fully as things allow. And they no doubt know that the country outside of where they are experiences life differently—maybe with the odds stacked in a less-high pile against them. It's only human for there to be some envy, and even some antagonism.

Here's where race creeps into the picture. When you take into account the relative scarcity of Black folk in the region, racism's spectre seems odd in that it would appear hard to hate people who aren't there to be hated. Racism though, is a chameleon, changing pattern and texture depending on environment and situational catalysts. It manifests itself in Appalachia as an outgrowth in large part from socio-economic pressures and good, old self-esteem issues. This is also in the interests of the “bosses” whose businesses so dominate the region, and further, the local politicians in their pockets. As a distracting straw man, they unsubtly perpetuate the dusky, but actualy unseen “other” as a factor in their doing so poorly. And since time immemorial, no group wants to be regarded as the low man on the totem pole (The irony of using a Native American metaphor should give us all pause.), and in America, regardless of social station, African Americans can never truly escape that position.

You may be bad off. You may be under-educated, or ill-housed...but as long as you ARE NOT a n*gg*r, you ARE NOT at the bottom.

For some people—for a LOT of people, that's more than enough to make them feel a little bit better about themselves. And anything that enables that is hunky dory when you're effectively parked in what America deems its sweaty regional armpit.

This is why plays to race as a subtle “feel-good” mechanism work in Appalachia—never mind that the person cast as the “one you should consider below you and thus unworthy of your trust” might actually help them. It's that gut play to emotion and self-esteem that is fertile ground for the evil's seed to take root. It clouds reason and common sense. It allows people to instantly believe the worst of Black folks—never mind the ridiculousness of a specific claim. Someone must be at the bottom and as long as it's a n*gg*r and not them, a sigh of relief can be breathed. It is much more of a tool than a belief system in a place where the overwhelmingly White population is so hopelessly beaten down, ironically worse off than a lot of their African American comrades in poverty.

It is why a Harvard educated Black man scans there as an other to be rejected out-of-hand as a potential leader...or more simply, a boss. (And “the boss” already doesn't play well in their circles, understandably) The “Harvard” hurts, but the color of his skin is the true dividing line here, and the one that ultimately wounded him in his primary battle against the equally well-educated, but demographically different in other unmistakable ways, Senator Hillary Clinton. On the whole, these people are not garden-variety racist in the practice of their day-to-day lives. In fact, considering their isolation from Black folks, racism is probably quite the non-factor in everyday life. Fighting to survive in the face of a constant economic strangulation is. There is the chance that in a general election that these folk could be swayed by strong economic revival messaging should Obama win what seems like a near-certain nomination. Their issue isn't so much about hatred of people like him as it is a desperate boosting of the wounded self-esteem of folks like themselves.

And there is the nub of it—a wounding. Wounding the vast bulk of the country America never sees when it thinks of those of us in dire straits. A wounding with the mocking “Soooooey!” calls and barbs on incest being a norm instead of a taboo. The day-in/day-out wounding that is the direct result of the social, cultural and economic armpit-ization of a mountainous swath of 21st century America encompassing some 25 million people. Starved of opportunity and resources to make better not by chance, but by design, because somebody more powerful wants it that way. When you back a bunch of folks into a corner and kick them about like trapped rats, you really can't be surprised at what they'll do to make a point. Silly, spiteful and self-defeating as it may seem.

Looking down our noses at Appalachia is what's at the root of this. Looking askance at them as the Daily News and other opinion-makers did is what perpetuates it. But it's going to take looking at them eye-to-eye as fellow human beings the way a Bobby Kennedy did in 1968 and trying to understand their problems, to finally help these people, and remove the stigmas that have been put in place to specifically keep them where they are—physically and socio-economically. It means actually doing things to fix their situations—not cheap pandering and playing to the short-term “gains” brought by emotions and dog-whistles. It's easy to hate on them, and even easier to simply dismiss. Greater America has been utterly guilty of this in its treatment of Appalachia to this very day, simultaneously ignoring and faux-courting them, and in the end giving them nothing.

What we saw there wasn't quite your boilerplate systemic racism—there is endemic prejudice involved in the voting pattern, but looking at the facts—and the true demographics, it's also a lot of conditioned response. Conditioned negative response—to their own very real oppression. It doesn't make it right or fair. But it is what it is.

“Writing these people off” isn't the thing to do, though. as it only continues the status quo that keeps them reacting as they do. Appalachia's race problem is more of a symptom than a disease. It can be fixed. But it is going to take an honest effort to make America “work” better for them. Effort. Care. Pressure. And time.

It's almost miraculous what those things can do. And if you don't think so, hell...just ask a former lump of coal.

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Iraq, The New Palestine

BAGHDAD — The ugly daily fight for ground in the poor Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City unfolded Saturday at a small mosque next door to a hospital, damaging the hospital and a number of its ambulances, and near a group of children who were injured by the violence as they gathered tin cans to sell for salvage.

The missiles that hit close to the Sadr General Hospital were American. After a night of clashes in the neighborhood, the Americans fired at least three “precision-guided munitions” at the small building next door to the hospital. Neighbors said the building was used as a place of prayer for pilgrims, hospital employees and neighborhood residents, but the military identified it as a command center for the Shiite militias it is battling.

Twenty-eight people were wounded in the strikes on the building and surrounding area, said Abdul Hussain Qassim, a hospital official. -- NYTimes.com

Iraq is the new Palestine and America is the new Israel. 100 years in Iraq is right. Unless we leave, we will never get out.

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The Meaning of School Shootings: Part Four (and Last)

My apologies for the wait between parts Three and Four -- my personal life (GDC, finals, projects, etc.) got in the way, as did my desire to make sure that I adequately presented the arguments against my thesis (which meant I had to actually read a couple of books :-)). But we're here at last, and we'll finish off the argument and provide a suggestion for improving our situation.

Re-cap of Parts One, Two, and Three
School shootings are statistically insignificant as a cause of death and injury in America, but they garner an unjustifiably large share of our media when they happen. I contend that we are interested in them not only because "if it bleeds, it leads" on TV, but because we recognize them as aberrant phenomena and, as sense-making creatures, we want to know why they happen and what they mean.

We are addressing part of why they happen -- not the short and long-term triggering events (bullying, childhood abuse, mental illness, all mentioned multiply in comments) but the long-term enabling events which result in murders rather than brawls or other, less socially unacceptable, behaviour? Why shootings? How did we go from fistfights to "rumbles" with knives to guns?

Violent media imagery plays a significant part. Violent media imagery includes movies, TV shows, TV news, music, and video games (computer games, arcade games, and console games). Studies show clearly that consumption of violent media imagery correlates with later violent behavior and that there are at least two mechanisms at work: arousal (which reinforces violent behaviours observed and performed) and desensitization (which reduces barriers to violent behaviour). Statistical examination suggests that between 15% and 37% of the increased aggressive or violent behaviour can be explained by exposure to violent media imagery.

Arguments against violent media imagery promoting violent behaviour often actually support the idea: James Paul Gee promotes video games as very effective teaching tools and arousal is at the heart of his argument. Harold Schechter suggests that all popular media is demonized and that the US has always had extremely violent media in the form of broadsides, dime novels, public executions, and other "savage pastimes". But he acknowledges that children behave differently today consuming both passive and active violent media imagery and that the physical "roughhousing" that resulted from earlier media violence is now missing.

Enabling
In my opinion, the link between violent media imagery and violent behaviour (both by correlation and by method) is well established. Violent media imagery effects (we'll see shortly why "causes" is not the right term) violent behaviour in two ways: it reinforces (via arousal and lack of contextual negative feedback both in story and real life) and it desensitizes (via repetition and contextual positive feedback both in story and real life). Note the common element of contextual feedback, which is covered extensively in Grossman: soldiers kill within a sharply defined context which requires (among other things) approval by an authority figure. Violent media imagery generally fails at "properly" (by which I mean in accordance with either military training or a desire to limit societal violence) contextualizing violence. This is a substantial difference between Schechter's "savage pastimes" and modern media violence: public executions, for instance, were clearly contextualizing non-state violent behaviour as inappropriate and subject to state sanction; even 1950's media like Daniel Boone (cited by Schechter as extremely violent by today's media standards) show a black-and-white view of violence (good violence by state actors and heroes in retribution for bad violence by non-state actors and villains like "Indians") that has context which is missing in much of today's violent imagery.

Viewed in this light, violent media imagery doesn't cause violent behaviour; it enables violent behaviour. As many commenters have noted, other causes (mental illness, abuse, bullying, ...) lead to violent behaviour: what violent media imagery does is make the response to those causes more violent than it would be otherwise.

Training
One particularly frightening enabling factor is the use of video games (yes, here I am explicitly indicting video games as opposed to generalized violent media imagery) for training. The US military and law enforcement have used video games back to Duck Hunt to teach trainees in "shoot / don't shoot" choices (largely "shoot" for the military and "don't shoot" for law enforcement, but the techniques are very similar). As the military uses them, games of this sort can be considered conditioning tools. As the law enforcement community uses them, games like Hogan's Alley are some of the best shoot / don't-shoot training aids available, and are far cheaper than creating a real "Hogan's Alley" like the FBI's training facility.

There is another way these games work, however:

Fourteen-year-old Michael Carneal steals a gun from a neighbor's house, brings it to school, and fires eight shots into a student prayer meeting that is breaking up. Prior to stealing the gun, he had never shot a real handgun in his life. The FBI says that the average experienced law enforcement officer, in the average shoot-out, at an average range of seven yards, hits with approximately one bullet in five. So how many hits did Michael Carneal make? He fired eight shots; he got eight hits, on eight different kids. Five of them were head shots, and the other three were upper torso. The result was three dead and one paralyzed for life. I tell law enforcement officers about this when I train them, and they are stunned. Nowhere in the annals of law enforcement or military or criminal history can we find an equivalent achievement. And this from a boy on his first try. (Grossman & DeGaetano, Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill, pg 4)

Video games are effective training devices. The US military wouldn't use them if they didn't work. Michael Carneal not only hit eight out of eight times on eight different targets, apparently all eight shots were into the "sniper's triangle" of upper chest and head. Impressive. Possibly unequaled. But still odd. Most inexperienced (and many experienced) shooters fix on a single target and fire until that target goes down, sometimes pulling the trigger continuously on an empty weapon.

The normal, almost universal response is to fire at a target until it drops and then move on to the next target. (ibid, pg 76)

There's only one school of shooting that teaches you to stand in one place and put one round into each target's head: video games.

Michael Carneal...never moved his feet during his rampage. He never fired far to the right or left, never far up or down....most video games each you to fire at each target only once, hitting as many targets as you can...And many video games give bonus effects ... for head shots. (ibid, pg 75-76)

Carneal is perhaps the most extreme example, but there are others. Wesley Schaefer in South Carolina, the Jonesboro, Arkansas shootings, and even Columbine have various links to video games ("obsessive" playing of video games, use as an explicit training tool, gaining tactical expertise, etc.). In none of these cases is the training link as explicit or as dramatic, and in none of them do video games cause the violence. But in all of them the training provided by video games enables the activity.

What's To Be Done?

Banning video games or violent media imagery is not on the table. Not only is it un-American, it probably wouldn't work. When you find a course of action which is both immoral and ineffective, it's best to look for other options.

Aside from attacking the actual causes of violent behaviour (mental illness, bullying, abuse, etc.), the best long-term solution is to properly contextualize violence, especially for young people. Soldiers returning from war do not have a significantly higher level of murderous behaviour than the population at large. Their training has enabled them to function in war without loosing warlike behaviour upon the rest of us, largely through dehumanization of the enemy and because of the strong requirement for authoritative orders before firing. These controlling elements are largely missing in most violent media imagery. In fact, much modern media glorifies the hero who breaks the rules in order to violently solve problems.

Consider the difference between Blade (the comic book, movies, TV series, and video games) and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. In Blade, the enemy is well defined and, in fact, inhuman (or serving the inhuman vampires). Killing a human in Blade: Trinity is clearly contextualized as a Bad Thing for a variety of reasons. Although GTA:SA is somewhat cartoonish in appearance, there's no dehumanization of enemies at all: they are fellow people, whether innocent civilians, enemy gang members, or even police officers. There is no clear distinction (in the game -- some players may provide one themselves) between civilians and combatants.

Let's be clear: the difference is not multiple forms of media versus video game. The difference is the contextualization of violence as acceptable against a limited class of enemy (one you're unlikely to encounter in real life, I might add) versus the contextualization of violence as acceptable against anyone. In 1950s and 1960s TV, violence was often properly contextualized (for the time: we need not discuss the inappropriateness of accepting violence against Indians or other class or racial grouping that was generally acceptable then) as acceptable when used against certain groups and unacceptable against other groups. We may lament the groups chosen then (or now) and we may consider this distinction irrelevant, but it is actually critical when you look back (see Part Two) at the five factors of Grossman's model for making killing acceptable to soldiers: Demands of Authority, Group Absolution, Predisposition of Killer, Total Distance from Victim, Target Attractiveness of Victim. Context figures prominently in Demands of Authority, Group Absolution, Total Distance from Victim, and Target Attractiveness of Victim.

Several parts of the 1954 Comics Code addressed this contextualization:

• Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal, to promote distrust of the forces of law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire to imitate criminals.
• If crime is depicted it shall be as a sordid and unpleasant activity.
• Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates a desire for emulation.
• In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal [be] punished for his misdeeds.
• Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly, nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.

The 1954 Comics Code isn't a model I'd like to emulate, but you find ideas where you find them. An informal code for media intended for children (under R, certainly) might be useful.

Unfortunately, "proper" contextualization is culture and nation dependent. Consider Counter-Strike:Condition Zero, in which players play either anti-terrorist units or terrorist cells. From an American cultural perspective, proper contextualization would limit players to playing anti-terrorist units. Other cultural contexts might find more propriety in playing the terrorist forces (although they would undoubtedly be relabeled "freedom fighters" or "Warriors for God" or something similar). Contextualization requires moral choices that many liberals in America are likely to be uncomfortable making. Of course, some conservatives may find contextualization just as difficult: is it OK to use violence against people violating the rule of law in America? Regardless of your position on the political spectrum, there are moral elements present in determining a "proper" context for violence, and there are some positions (ultimate pacifism, for instance) from whom there is no context where violence is acceptable.

Conclusion
Ultimately, school shootings are meaningful because they are aberrant. They focus our attention on changes in our society that normally remain hidden: the pervasiveness of bullying and abuse, the increase in violent media images, the effectiveness of video games as training devices. What we choose to do with that attention and the knowledge that comes from it is the hard question. The harder we look at the system the more complex it becomes, and the more complex it is the less likely simplistic solutions (ban video games, demonize Hollywood) are to work. Complex solutions (reduce abuse by reducing poverty and rebuilding the family, reduce bullying by diversity and education, recontextualize violence as inappropriate in more circumstances) are harder to conceive and immeasurably harder to implement, especially when public policy ideas must be sold in six-second sound bites.

Finding a solution begins with understanding the nature of the problem.


Sources:
James Paul Gee, Why Video Games are Good for your Soul, Common Ground, ISBN 186335574-X, 2005.
Dave Grossman and Gloria DeGaetano, Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill, Crown, ISBN 0-609-60613-1, 1999.
Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Back Bay Books, ISBN 0-316-33011-6, 1995, 1996.
Harold Schechter, Savage Pastimes, St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-28276-1, 2005.


A Personal Note: when I set out researching this topic, I was of the opinion that violent media imagery was generally irrelevant to violent behaviour. I had worked extensively in video games and been constantly assured that we provided catharsis not conditioning. I ignored facts like the military using video games as training tools (both tactical training and conditioning). I've read some of Grossman's fiction and did not like it. I've followed the stories about Jack Thompson and find him odious, opportunistic, and overly sensational. I started writing this series (originally going to be a single post) with the idea that I would show that school shootings and violence are statistically irrelevant and have no underlying "cause".

But upon reading the source material, my opinion changed as my understanding of the mechanisms deepened. Imagine my surprise when I wrote this series instead. I have read more than a thousand pages on this subject (and have one major work left to read -- it turned out to be unnecessary for this series), and it turned me around 180 degrees. I feel like someone smacked me upside the head with a big pile of bumper stickers saying "if you can't change your mind, how do you know you have one?".

Thanks for reading.

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Obama: “A More Perfect Union”

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama

“A More Perfect Union”

Constitution Center

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”


Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.


The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.


Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.


And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.


This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.


This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.


I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.


It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.


Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.


This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.


And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.


On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.


I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.


But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.


As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.


Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way


But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.


In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:


“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”


That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.


And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.


I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.


These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.


Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.


But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.


The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.


Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.


Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.


Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.


A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.


This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.


But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.


And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.


In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.


Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.


Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.


This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.


But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.


For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.


Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.


The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.


In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.


In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.


For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.


We can do that.


But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.


That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.


This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.


This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.


This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.


I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.


There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.


There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.


And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.


She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.


She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.


Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.


Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”


“I'm here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.


But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

There's more...

The Meaning of School Shootings: Part Three

In parts One and Two we discussed the NIU shooting, the low rate of homicide in schools in America, possible demographic effects upon violent crime rates, studies of Arousal and Desensitization in consumers of violent media imagery, and I introduced you to Lt. Col. Dave Grossman and his psychological model of resistance to killing and how the military overcomes the innate resistance 98% of us have to killing other humans.

I want to re-iterate that I have generally been talking about violent media imagery (which can include video games, but is explicitly also movies, TV, TV news, and music as well as video games), not specifically about violent video games. There has been a lot of discussion in comments about banning video games, and that is not the main thrust of this article. Certain specific video games will eventually enter the story, but most of our discussion so far has been about generalized violent media imagery. This part talks explicitly about counter-arguments, many of which deal specifically with video games. I want to make clear that I am talking about video games in this post because of those counter-arguments, not because I want to specifically attack video games.

We have established that there are studies showing effective Arousal upon viewing violent imagery and that Desensitization occurs (that is, over time it takes more violent imagery to create an equal reaction in consumers). It's not surprising, therefore, that we find trends of increasing violence in media:

For one thing, there's more of it. Laval University professors Guy Paquette and Jacques de Guise studied six major Canadian television networks over a seven-year period, examining films, situation comedies, dramatic series, and children's programming (though not cartoons). The study found that between 1993 and 2001, incidents of physical violence increased by 378 per cent. TV shows in 2001 averaged 40 acts of violence per hour.
...

Paquette and de Guise also identified a disturbing increase in psychological violence, especially in the last two years. The study found that incidents of psychological violence remained relatively stable from 1993 to 1999, but increased 325 per cent from 1999 to 2001. Such incidents now occur more frequently than physical violence on both francophone and anglophone networks.

Canadians are also heavily influenced by American programming. Paquette and de Guise found that over 80 per cent of the TV violence aired in Canada originates in the U.S. ... Overall, 87.9 per cent of all violent acts appear before 9 p.m., and 39 per cent air before 8 p.m. -- at a time when children are likely to be watching.

I assume it's unnecessary to cite increasing realism and violence in video games :-).

From the studies and books I have read and cited in this series, I am well-convinced that violent media imagery increases the chances of aggressive and violent behaviour. It's not clear how much, but I find the arguments in favor of Arousal and Desensitization very compelling.

So let's take a look at the other side of the argument.

Counter-Arguments
While I was at GDC (the annual computer Game Developer's Conference) last month (part of the reason this piece is so late), I thought I'd see what the game developer's community had to say about this. So I went to the GDC store and bought the two books they had on the subject: James Paul Gee's Why Video Games Are Good For Your Soul and Harold Schechter's Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History of Violent Entertainment. I read them cover to cover and I believe I held an open mind about their content.

Why Video Games Are Good For Your Soul
Gee's book is a short paean to the teaching ability of video games, with specific examples (numbers added for easy reference below):

(1) A player's actions and decisions in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night creates a colorful and affect-laden world, a world which recruits the player's feelings, emotions, and interest in powerful ways....Unfortunately, this background of affect -- of feeling, emotion, caring, interest and excited expectation about what will come next -- is treated as entirely unimportant in school. Nonetheless, it is the background without which there is no real learning. (p. 31)

(2) Things are different in a game like Full Spectrum Warrior for the Xbox. This game teaches the player how to be, albeit not a professional vampire hunter, but a professional soldier. It demands that the player thinks, values, and acts like one to "win" the game... (p. 43)

(3) Games like Full Spectrum Warrior allow players to participate in expert knowledge, values, strategies, and skills. They allow players to experience a sense of control -- a partial (but only partial) control over fate and caprice -- in a complex and sometimes dangerous and threatening set of situations. Players experience a certain expert mastery of complexity, risk, and danger. Such a feeling -- often quite lacking in real life -- is exhilarating. (p. 49)

(4) It is important -- and this is something we know from recent research on the mind -- that seeing and action are deeply connected for human beings (Barsalou 1999a, b; Gelnberg 1997; Glenberg & Robertson 1999). (p. 54)

(5) But adding authentic professionalism to a game does not just open up a unique space for strategy, it also opens up a unique space for identity. An authentic professional has values and attitudes, as well as characteristic ways of talking, acting, and interacting, connected to his skill or special skills and knowledge. These values, attitudes and ways of talking, acting, and interacting constitute and identity. In blending with the virtual character -- in acting out of a shared set of skills -- the player takes on this identity. The player gets to play with, think about, and empathize with this identity in an embodied way, since the virtual character is the player's surrogate body in the game world. (p. 68)

(6) Take first- and third-person shooter games as an example, games often derided by politicians and policy makers, e.g., games like Half-Life, Metal Gear Solid, Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Max Payne, and Far Cry. Here are just a few (there are many more) of the learning principles that the player is (however tacitly) exposed to in learning the play these games:

• (6a) Learning is based upon situated practice, not lectures and words out of context;
• ...
• (6b) Learning is a form of extended engagement of self as an extension of an identity to which the player is committed;
• ...
• (6c) Problems are ordered so that the first ones to be solved in the game lead to fruitful generalizations about how to solve more complex problems later on;
• ...
• (6d) There are intrinsic rewards (within the game) keyed to any player's level of expertise
• ... (pp. 112-113)
  

It's tempting to just say "Gee says games are great teaching tools" and point out that such a statement would be supportive of the idea that violent media encourages violent behaviour, but I hate to pass up the opportunity to go point by point....

(1) When Gee talks about the effectiveness of affect as a teaching aid (indeed, the requirement that affect be present for learning, he's saying that Arousal is an effective teaching aid. So increased Arousal in consumers of violent media imagery means that learning is happening more easily while consuming violent imagery.

(2) Do we really need several million more Americans trained to think, value, and act like soldiers? And does the game include training and values based upon the Geneva Accords?

(3) Once again, "...is exhilarating" links us back to Arousal. The effective transfer of expert knowledge leads us to the point (below) of successful training.

(4) "...[S]eeing and action are deeply connected for human beings" reminds us that the interactivity of video games makes them even more effective teaching (and training) devices than other (more passive) media.

(5) Players "...empathize with this identity in an embodied way", implying greater connection between the player and their avatar/character.

(6)
(6a) Emphasizing the conditioning effect of shooters.

(6b) Again, emphasizing the connection between the player and avatar/character

(6c) Overgeneralization of game behaviour is exactly what those derisive "politicians and policy makers" are worried about.

(6d) Rewards are an effective conditioning teachnique.

In the end, Gee's arguments sum up to "computer games can be effective learning techniques". And as I already noted, that is an argument in support of the idea that violent media (and computer games in particular) can encourage Arousal and Desensitization (as shown by studies) and potentially transmit game behaviours to the real world. I have no argument with Gee's conclusions -- computer games can be powerful learning tools. The question is: what should we use them to teach?

Savage Pastimes
Most of Savage Pastimes can be summed up as "there used to be really ugly media before TV". Dime novels, murder ballads, and so on. This is immaterial. Our argument against violent media is that studies demonstrate certain effects. We do not claim that current media is uniquely violent, but that it is (as measured by studies) effective at reinforcing certain behaviours.

The remainder of Schechter's arguments against violent media encouraging violent behaviour are a claim that critics of pop media overstate the number of studies showing correlation between violent media and violent behaviours and generic claims that those studies that do exist are flawed. The first is irrelevant (I have made no claims about vast numbers of studies) and the second lacks enough detail to consider. I have found no specific claims that the studies I cite are flawed.

One quote is perhaps worth addressing:

There's no doubt that, for young boys, there's a connection between watching action-packed entertainment and roughhousing. That was certainly true of me and all the other nice, middle-class Bronx-born boomers I grew up with. After watching a few hours of Wild Bill Hickock or the Cisco Kid, we could hardly contain ourselves. We would strap on our leatherette holsters and leap into action, galloping around the house on invisible steeds, taking potshots at each other with our Hopalong Cassidy pistols, throwing ourselves at each toehr and wrestling like bear cubs. The cries of our mothers -- shouting at us (in those pre-PC days) to go play outside if we wanted to act like "wild Indians" -- still echoes in my ears.

Grossman (and others) explicitly argue that it is the lack of this physical release for the Arousal of violent media which contributes to the Desensitization and conditioning of consumers of violent media. Instead of using media imagery in constructive ways, the constant exposure without catharsis is a part of the problem.

If these two volumes represent the best arguments against the idea that violent media has negative effects upon at least some consumers, then the defenders of media have a problem.

I had thought that I'd finish with this part, but I think that's enough for now. I apologize for the long gap between postings and promise that I'll be quicker with Part Four, which should wrap things up. We've now covered all the essential bases except one: how specific arcade games act as enablers (training devices) for shooters and why the military uses even simple games to condition soldiers to fire. Once we know that, we see how the chain operates: from violent media through Arousal, Desensitization, and Conditioning, adding Training to enable some few individuals to perform quite incredible feats of combat shooting without ever having touched a firearm before. Finally, we'll talk about how the decontextualization of violent media imagery contributes to the problem, and how relatively small changes in the content of violent media presentations can make a difference.

There's more...

The Meaning of School Shootings: Part Two

In Part One, I used the NIU tragedy as a springboard to talk about school homicide in general and to ask the fundamental question: Why? Why do we care about school homicide if it’s so rare (the chances of being struck by lightning are far higher)? There was an unexplained rise in violent crime in America from about 1960 to the early 1990s (which has since fallen off). Demographics seem to explain about half that rise. We are discussing the possibility that violent media imagery (TV, movies, music, and video games) may have an effect, short and long term, upon users/viewers, especially younger ones.

Effects of Violent Media Imagery: Arousal
The 1996 study Mortal Kombat(tm): The Effects of Violent Videogame Play on Males’ Hostility and Cardiovascular Responding, published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, investigates the relationship of video game play, violence of presented images, and subjects’ cardiovascular (CV) reactivity and hostility. Their conclusions include:

...increased game violence elicited greater CV reactivity and higher scores on hostility measures. Subjects who played MK1 or MK2 had higher heart rate reactivity than those who played billiards. Subjects who played MK2 showed greater systolic blood pressure reactivity than those who played MK1 or billiards. Finally, subjects who played MK2 scored higher on the hostility measures than those who played MK1, who in turn scored higher than those who played billiards.

In this study, MK1 is the standard version of Mortal Kombat and MK2 is the version with the extra gore turned on. Other studies have also found correlations between CV reactivity and hostility scores. Specifically, systolic blood pressure reactivity positively correlates with hostility scores on several inventories.

Measure	SBP	DBP	HR	ACL	Bell	Buss-Durkee
SBP	1.00	0.32*	0.19	0.36*	0.41*	0.23
DBP		1.00	0.03	0.16	0.13	0.13
HR			1.00	0.35*	0.38*	0.47**
ACL				1.00	0.73***	0.83***
Bell					1.00	0.85***
Buss-Durkee						1.00

SBP = Systolic Blood Pressure, DBP = Diastolic Blood Pressure, HR = Heart Rate, ACL = Adjective Checklist, Bell = Bell Adjustment Inventory, Buss-Durkee = Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory
*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001

This “greater CV reactivity” is also called arousal. From Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill (Grossman and DeGaetano, 1999):

The faster and the more salient the violent imagery, the more likely it is that our kids will be in states of emotional arousal. It is the fast action and the quick cuts of today’s programming that keep the young brain on alert,in a way very similarly to the soldier who is on alert in the battlefield
...
While violent images are keeping our kids on alert, they just sit there. There is no way to release the energy building up inside them....How do our kids understand and disperse all the feelings that watching violence arouses? Unfortunately, most children and teens don’t get these vital opportunities. There’s no one around to talk with them at these crucial moments. As a society, we have deemed TV and videos our number one baby-sitter.
...
When children start off in an alarm state with high noradrenaline and impulsive behavior, they often revert to low noradrenaline levels and calculating behaviors.

The Influence of Media Violence on Youth, published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest in 2003, is a meta-analysis of existing studies of violence in dramatic TV and movies, TV news, music videos and lyrics, video games, and internet participation, and of studies concerning the introduction of TV into communities. From the section titled Arousal and Excitation Transfer:

Media violence is exciting (arousing) for most youth. That is, it increases heart rate, the skin’s conductance of electricity, and other physiological indicators of arousal. There is evidence that this arousal can increase aggression in two different ways. First, arousal, regardless of the reason for it, can energize or strengthen whatever an individual’s dominant action tendency happens to be at the time, Thus, if a person is provoked or otherwise instigated to aggress at the time increased arousal occurs, heightened aggression can result....Second, if a person who is aroused misattributes his or her arousal to a provocation by someone else, the propensity to behave aggressively in response to that annoyance is increased. Thus, people tend to react more violently to provocations immediately after watching exciting movies than they do at other times.

Violence of viewed images correlates positively with arousal. Arousal correlates positively with hostility. Arousal also can cause reversion to lower levels of neurotransmitters like noradrenaline, which leads us directly to desensitization.

Effects of Violent Media Imagery: Desensitization
Influence of Media Violence on Youth defines emotional desensitization as "a reduction in distress-related physiological reactivity to observations or thoughts of violence" and goes on to explain:

...emotional desensitization occurs when people who watch a lot of media violence no longer respond with as much unpleasant physiological arousal as they did initially. Because the unpleasant physiological arousal (or negative emotional reactions) normally associated with violence has an inhibitory influence on thinking about violence, condoning violence, or behaving violently, emotional desensitization (i.e., the diminution of the unpleasant arousal) can result in a heightened likelihood of violent thoughts and behaviors (Huesmann et al., 2003)

Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill:

In American culture, toddlers as young as eighteen months begin with TV programs designed especially for them that contain twice as much violence as adult prime-time viewing.

In addition, violence on TV is rarely realistic or negatively contextualized. According to Influence of Media Violence, 96% of all violent television programs use aggression for simply entertaining the audience. Only 4% have an antiviolence theme. Nearly 40% of violent scenes involve humor, 75% of scenes feature no immediate punishment or condemnations for violence. Almost 45% of programs feature "bad" characters who are never or rarely punished for their aggressive actions. Of all violent scenes on TV, only 16% depict long-term realistic consequences of violence.

Why Does It Matter? It’s Hard to Kill

Despite assumptions of keyboard commandos everywhere, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (in On Killing, 1995, 1996) tells us that it's hard for people to kill each other, even in wartime. According to the best data available, soldiers in the American Civil War, World War I, and World War II had only about a 10-15% effective firing rate. Improved training and conditioning regimens during Korea, Vietnam, and since have raised the effective firing rate to 90-95%. All firing rates are for infantry using individual light weapons.

Grossman's model says that the ability of a human to kill depends upon five factors:

• Demands of Authority
• proximity of authority
• respect for authority
• intensity of demand for kill
• legitimacy of authority
  
• Group Absolution
• identification with group
• proximity of group
• intensity of support for kill
• number in immediate group
• legitimacy of group
  
• Predisposition of Killer
• training / conditioning
• recent experiences
• temperament
  
• Total Distance from Victim
• physical distance
• emotional distance (cultural, moral, social, mechanical)
  
• Target Attractiveness of Victim
• relevance of available strategies
• relevance of victim
• payoff (killer's gain, enemy's loss)
  

Classic military training methods emphasize the first two points: authority and the group. Modern military training methods concentrate on establishing distance and conditioning. Distance, whether physical, cultural, moral, social, or mechanical, correlates with ability to kill. Shooting from farther away makes it easier to kill, as does dehumanizing the enemy (emphasizing atrocities, calling them "gooks" or "dinks" or "huns" or "wogs"). Instead of learning to shoot on a Known Distance Range (KDR) with open grassy areas and bullseye targets, modern armies train soldiers in a “combat simulator” with pre-built firing positions and popup silhouette targets. Even primitive video games like Duck Hunt (with modified graphics and light guns that look like M-16s) are used to condition soldiers to fire upon targets without thinking. This conditioning is largely responsible for increasing the effective firing percentage of infantry with light weapons up to 90-95%.

The "Natural Soldier"
From On Killing:

Swank and Marchand's World War II study noted the existence of 2 percent of combat soldiers who are predisposed to be "aggressive psychopaths" and apparently do not experience the normal resistance to killing and the resultant psychiatric casualties associated with extended periods of combat. But the negative connotations associated with the term "psychopath," or its modern equivalent "sociopath," are inappropriate here, since this behavior is a generally desirable one for soldiers in combat.
It would be absolutely incorrect to conclude that 2 percent of all veterans are psychopathic killers. Numerous studies indicate that combat veterans are no more inclined to violence than nonvets. A more accurate conclusion would be that there is 2 percent of the male population that, if pushed or if given a legitimate reason, will kill without regret or remorse. What these individuals represent...is the capacity for the levelheaded participation in combat that we as a society glorify and that Hollywood would have us believe that all soldiers possess.

These "natural soldiers" (the term is popularized by Gwynne Dyer in War) are those who have no real problem killing under the right circumstances. Because natural soldiers go through the same training program as other soldiers, it is assumed that the difference between a natural and an average solider is temperament. Modern training methods are attempting to turn regular people into "natural soldiers" via conditioning. And while they succeed in increasing the firing rate, the increasing rate of PTSD suggests that conditioning isn't all that is necessary.

What's it All Mean?
Exposure to violent media imagery increases arousal. Increased arousal is a state many people find pleasant and desirable. Over time, increased levels of exposure are required to maintain a given level of arousal, a process called desensitization. Desensitization increases the "distance" between killer and victim and makes it easier to kill and reduces the psychiatric consequences. Conditioning reduces the resistance to killing without necessarily reducing the psychiatric consequences.


In the third and final part, I'll wrap this up with a discussion of the public health consequences of this desensitization and conditioning, talk about how certain types of video games contribute to the capability of shooters, and offer suggestions on reducing the effects of violent media exposure.

There's more...

The Meaning of School Shootings: Part One

School Homicides

Some of the names and body counts are all too familiar: Littleton, CO (Columbine)/15 dead, 23 wounded; Virginia Tech, VA/32 dead, 15 wounded; West Paducah, KY/3 dead, 5 wounded; Springfield, OR/2 dead, 22 wounded; Jonesboro, AR/5 dead, 10 wounded...

Some are familiar to a few: Bethel, AK/2 dead, 2 wounded; Moses Lake, WA/3 dead, 1 wounded; Richmond, VA/2 wounded; Gary, IN/1 dead; New York, NY/2 wounded; Granite Hills, CA/4 wounded...

School shootings are a statistically insignificant problem in the US. According to the CDC, there were 116 deaths from homicide at school between 1999 and 2006, a rate dropping from 0.07 to 0.03 per 100,000 every year or 16.5 deaths per year. That's about 1.25 student homicides per month. As a reference, about 100 deaths and 500 injuries (in a larger population) are caused in the US every year by lightning strike. The CDC calculates the rate of casualty (killed and wounded) by lightning in military personnel from 1998 to 2001 as 4.7 - 5.8 per 100,000 person years. From 2000 to 2005 the rate of fatality in auto accidents in the US was between 14.6 and 15.0 per 100,000 person years*. In other words, you're nearly 500 times* more likely to die in an auto accident than a student is likely to be murdered at school in any given year.

* (snapshot of my Excel sheet, data from the links provided)

So if school shootings like the one at Northern Illinois University are so "statistically insignificant", why bother with them?

One reason is that they get splashed all over the news. It's no secret that "if it bleeds, it leads</