Tag: killing

What’s so bad about the Ferguson, MO, shooting, anyway?

Posted on by kathiemm
20140821060210!Lt_Ray_Albers_points_rifle_in_Ferguson
St. Ann Police Lieutenant points rifle at civilians in Ferguson, MO. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Work by Darmokand.

So what’s the big deal about Ferguson police shooting an unarmed black man?

Aren’t people getting shot by the police in this country all the time without even a ripple of attention in the mainstream media? Aren’t they disproportionately black? Aren’t they often unarmed?

It’s really difficult to get solid answers to these questions but there is good evidence that the answer to all of them is “Yes!”  Still, the attention to Ferguson is important for a number of reasons: The shootings and subsequent police response to protesters are symptoms of much larger problems, and like most symptoms (e.g., chills, fevers), violent behaviors can be signs of more than one illness.

For example, the lethal police actions in Ferguson are symptomatic of several pathologies that ought not to be ignored:

*rampant racism, which disproportionately kills people of color and is life-threatening in many ways less obvious than the firing of guns.

*erosion of gains made during the Civil Rights Movement, as described here by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

*this country’s glorification of violence

*the turning of civilian police forces into swat teams and other sorts of military units

So, there’s a lot that’s bad about Ferguson and all it represents.

Most of you know that ignoring symptoms (e.g., the cough that accompanies smoking, the weight gain that accompanies poor eating habits, the mindless behavior that can follow excessive drinking) can lead to worsening problems.  What kinds of problems can you foresee from ignoring the symptoms that Ferguson exposed?

 

Predators

Posted on by kathiemm

The deck outside my window is usually thronged with chattering birds—mourning doves, chickadees, redwing blackbirds, nuthatches, cardinals, blue jays, flickers, juncos, and an occasional redheaded woodpecker—that peck at the suet and gobble up the hundreds of pounds of birdseed that I throw out for them every winter.

Photo of hawks by Thomas O'Neil
Photo of hawks by Thomas O’Neil. From Wikimedia Commons, used under CC Attribution Generic 2.5 license.

It is quiet now, and I know why. The hawk that lives in an old pine tree near my house must be looking for prey, and my usual visitors are alert to his presence.

Hawks are predators—defined as animals that live by killing and eating other animals.

Predators (probably wolves in particular, but maybe lions, tigers, and bears too) have a bad rap with many people. But predators, like scavengers (e.g., vultures, yellow jackets, and raccoons), play an essential role in maintaining the ever precarious balance of nature. If you have never learned to appreciate predators, read Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver.

There is another definition of predator that does not apply to the creatures playing an essential role in our ecosystem. The other definition is “a person who looks for other people in order to use, control, or harm them in some way.” Synonyms and related words include bloodsucker, exploiter, destroyer, and leech.

Those kinds of predators–a subspecies of homo sapiens–are a threat to the balance of nature and to the survival of their own and other species. They don’t kill to eat. They kill to feed an insatiable bloodlust; they glory in killing the last surviving members of other species. They rush to frack land that is not in their backyard. They lie about global warming because they dream of an iceless arctic where they can get more oil, oil, oil. They sell weapons to anyone. What do they care if children of a U.S. ghetto, let alone “foreigners” with different religions and different color skins, kill each other?

Thankfully, there are a lot fewer human predators than there are people who love this land and seek peace and social justice for all. We who are opposed to human predators must recognize how much stronger and louder our voices could be if we united.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Misrepresenting or minimizing consequences (Moral disengagement, part 6)

Posted on by kathiemm

Misrepresenting or minimizing consequences is another moral disengagement mechanism.

Psychologist Albert Bandura notes that when people commit atrocities for personal gain or as a response to social pressure, one way to offset shame and guilt is to minimize or distort the ill-effects of their behavior.

During contemporary warfare by the developed nations, this process is facilitated by modern technology, which allows maiming and killing from high in the air–thus avoiding the sight of blood, guts, and dismembered bodies; the screams of pain, pleas for help; and victims begging for an end to their ordeal.

It has been noted that the Pulitzer-prize winning photograph of the naked Vietnamese girl running from her napalmed village played a pivotal role in turning the American public against the Vietnam War.

To avoid a repetition of that kind of public disavowal of their political and military aims, more recent governments have exercised extreme control over media portrayals of wartime events.

Misrepresenting and minimizing consequences is rampant in relation to the environmental consequences of war. Among the long-lasting effects of war that are minimized right out of people’s consciousness are:

  • Sunken ships that continue to pollute the oceans
  • Landmines that continue to maim and kill
  • Hazardous waste from the manufacturing of weapons
  • Destruction and pollution of wildlife and human habitat through use of herbicidal weapons such as Agent Orange
  • Environmental degradation from the thousands of refugees fleeing the armed conflict.

(For more about environmental consequences of war, see the report of the Environmental Literacy Council.)

In reaction to the minimizing, misrepresenting, and denial of the environmental effects of war, the United Nations, in 2001, declared November 6 to be  International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Note: This post was adapted from my previously published article in Peace Psychology (a publication of the American Psychological Association), Spring, 2009.

Euphemistic labeling (Moral disengagement, part 3)

Posted on by kathiemm

Truthful Language NOT!Another moral disengagement mechanism identified by psychologist Albert Bandura is euphemistic labeling. This mechanism refers to the process of sanitizing language in order to detract from the emotional intensity of the reality being referenced.

Some examples of euphemistic labeling:

  • “Friendly fire,” used to describe the accidental killing of soldiers by their own comrades
  • “Servicing the target,” used as a substitute for bombing missions
  • “Collateral damage,” applied to the killing of innocent civilians

Another favorite is “enhanced interrogation”—not exactly the term most of us would use when describing repeated efforts to bring  a 15-year-old boy almost to the point of drowning over and over again.

An excellent example of euphemistic labeling by the U.S. government was changing the name of one of its major executive departments from the Department of War to the Department of Defense.

Consider the 1982 U.S. invasion of Grenada, a tiny Caribbean island. Six thousand U.S. troops bravely took on almost 125 powerful Cuban soldiers (for which 7,000 medals were handed out); U.S. students in a medical school waited to be rescued; and a U.S. newspaper helpfully published a map of the city of Granada in Spain. Sadly, an aircraft bomb hit the wrong target and some children at an orphanage were killed.

And what was the U.S. government “defending” against? The building of a 5,000 foot runway that Soviet jets in Cuba might be able to use to bomb, well, somewhere.

In the next post, we describe the moral engagement alternative to euphemistic language—that is, telling it like it is. In the meantime, please comment and share examples of euphemistic labeling that you’ve noticed.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Note: This post was adapted from my previously published article in Peace Psychology (a publication of the American Psychological Association), Spring, 2009, as well as Corgan, M., and Malley-Morrison, K., Operation URGENT FOLLY, International Psychology Bulletin,  Spring, 2008, 28-30.