[extropy-chat] Death Toll

[Olga Bourlin]

From: "Technotranscendence" <neptune at superlink.net>
Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2005 8:33 PM

> On Sunday, July 10, 2005 9:49 PM Olga Bourlin fauxever at sprynet.com wrote:
 >> I will jump to a hunch, and say that IMO something like what is imputed 
in the article below cannot be discounted:

>> "JonBenet Ramsey, Laci Peterson, Elizabeth Smart... all household
names right? Well then how about Alexis Patterson, Georgia Moses, or even 
Evelyn Hernandez? Chances are you've never heard of them. Yet all of these 
women were victims of brutal kidnappings. The difference is that Patterson, 
Moses, and Hernandez were women of color and the reality is that nobody 
cares. "

> I think it can be discounted for one reason alone:  they become household 
> names partly because of other people.  For instance, someone else might 
> not be racist, either implicitly or explicitly, but unless they closely 
> follow non-mainstream news closely, she or he will hear more about the 
> former set and much less about the latter.

Forgive me, I'm unclear what you meant by "... it can be discounted[?]" 
(*what* "can be discounted[?]").  Maybe it's because I don't  exactly 
understood what you wrote ... but no matter how I try to interpret it, it 
looks to me like you are contradicting yourself.

Just what is "non-mainstream" news?  Are the young women in that paragraph 
(and link I posted previously) "non-mainstream" (even though they are 
Americans?), and is that why you think that kind of racism can be 
discounted?  (It seems like what you are intimating is that it isn't the 
innie-mainstream people's fault - and, therefore, the innie-mainstream 
*people* cannot justifiably be called racists - because, with its 
designations of mainstream and non-mainstream news, it is in fact our 
amorphous media - and/or our society - that is racist?)

While we've been discussing this issue several people here have given their 
thoughts about the possible reasons for the seemingly different reactions of 
the London deaths v. Iraqi deaths.  I think racism (societal or otherwise) 
*is* one of those reasons, as well.  Do you disagree?

Olga

In your post (unless I misunderstood it) -