My blog break didn't last long, because when I have something on my mind I need to write it out. Unfortunately, today I am trying to understand the tragedy that has taken place in my home town. You see, I live about three miles from where UNC student body president
Eve Carson was murdered last week, and our whole community is grappling with this senseless loss, especially as the story has continued to unfold, with two young men arrested and charged with the crime in the past day.
This morning I was driving from Chapel Hill up to Washington, D. C., listening to the latest developments on WUNC public radio and then thinking about the news long after I got out of range. I had been pondering
"Missing white woman syndrome," the disproportionate swell of media attention that comes whenever a pretty white girl or woman is missing or killed. It's an offensive concept no matter how you look at it, a phenomenon does a disservice to everyone: other people who are victims of crime, of course, those whose cases do not get as thoroughly investigated; and even the white women themselves, who become objectified. I can imagine Eve's grieving friends having to defend her against thoughtless comments I've seen on blogs, basically having to say that yes, she was pretty and popular, but she was
also a leader, a caring person of substance. She wasn't "just" a pretty white woman. Even those defenses seem to reinforce the stereotype.
It made me hark back to what Carol Lee Flinders wrote about in her book
At the Root of This Longing. Bear with me because I am paraphrasing, away from my library, but Flinders basically says that every random murder of a woman by a man who does not know her reinforces a system of oppression that keeps all women down. It becomes an archetypal crime--each violent act reminds each woman that men are in charge, that the best we can hope for is male protection from other violent males.
Race comes into this case as well, in especially pernicious ways. I believe that despite our dreams of liberty, racism is America's "original sin," the historical wrong that is still not healed to this day. In a tragic boomerang, two young black men killing a young white woman has the effect of reinforcing our worst ingrained fears and racial stereotypes, ultimately perpetuating the whole system of racism. I was appalled by the open racism displayed by many
commenters on
The New York Times coverage of the Carson case. Once the suspects were charged, many people immediately began to call for the death penalty and vigilante justice.
This made me think about Susan Faludi's book
The Terror Dream, which has stuck with me more than any other book I have read in the past year. Faludi argues that Americans have developed a protective myth of "women and children safe in the arms of their men" (quote from PW review).
Faludi says that "the American myth to which we resort was constructed to cover up a perceived and foundational male shame," that of white men being unable to protect "their" women from Indian raids. She cites the media's inaccurate coverage of soldier Jessica Lynch's experience in Iraq as "a classic example of the media rewriting a real-life story to fit the master narrative of our security myth, just as our culture has done over hundreds of years.... The narrative we keep returning to demands inflated male heroes rescuing a helpless girl, ideally one in danger of violation, which is the story the media wanted out of the Lynch rescue tale--and distorted to get."
Part of the insidious danger of our security myth is that over the years it has morphed to include many different "dark outsiders" as enemies. Faludi convincingly connects the anxiety over Indian raids as played out in our fascination with "Cowboys and Indians," the historical demonization of African-American men, and our hero narrative constructed after 9/11. Faludi says that much of this process is unconscious, but that doesn't make it any less real:
"We didn't remember the original trauma. We are, indeed, a history-averse culture.... But we are profoundly shaped as a society by the reigning mythology that our original trauma produced. We are shaped by its tangible cultural legacy--a worldview whose instructions are handed down in everything from newspaper accounts to novels to movie scripts. And that is the legacy we reach for all the more strongly in times of threat and crisis. The fact that we aren't aware of its historical provenance only makes us more susceptible to its siren call. We take it as a bedrock given, as normal, and fail to recognize the ways it disfigures our response."
Which brings me back to Eve Carson, partly explaining why her death got so much attention and has provoked such primal rage in demand for immediate punishment for her killers. The final cruel irony of "missing white woman syndrome" unfolded as I drove into range of WAMU public radio in Washington, D. C. The 11 am national news feed included reporting from Chapel Hill, that one of the suspects in Eve Carson's death was also being
charged with the killing of Abhijit Mahato. You have probably never heard of him. Google
"Abhijit Mahato," you get 12,900 results, compared to 126,000 results for "Eve Carson." He was a 29-year old engineering Ph. D. student at Duke who was found shot to death in his off-campus apartment in January. Most of us in the Triangle were probably vaguely aware of his murder, but as shocking as the crime was, it did not make an enduring news impression, even locally. I am ashamed to say that I could not have told you his name or picked out his photo before today.
If Mahato's murder had been taken more seriously, could Eve's death been prevented? If student/neighborhood safety in Durham had been taken more seriously, could Mahato's death have been prevented? We'll never know the answer to those maddening questions. Another person had been charged in Mahato's murder, and until today, police had not said there were other suspects in the case. But the tragedies accumulate as this story develops, woven through with the threads of race and gender that are part of the fabric of our nation's history.
Labels: Abhijit Mahato, Carol Lee Flinders, Eve Carson, missing white woman syndrome, Susan Faludi
It's time for some good news for a change. Renee Peterson Trudeau, author of The Mother's Guide to Self-Renewal, is leading a Women's Spring Self-Renewal Retreat in Austin, Texas from May 2 to 4.
