How are acts of mass violence connected to white supremacy?
Research has demonstrated that there is a positive correlation between mass violence like shootings and white supremacist ideologies. White supremacy has always been synonymous with acts of terrorism and in the desire to commit large scale murder and violence against its victims: – immigrants, LGBTQ folks, people of the Jewish faith, its naysayers, but mainly Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) in the United States.
It is a common misconception that mental illness is the sole driving force of mass violence. According to the APA, “Recent mass shootings have inevitably led to news reports of the suspected shooters’ mental health, but psychological research shows there is no clear link between mental illness and violence”. This myth is not only inaccurate but it leads to a harmful stereotype that people who do suffer from mental health issues are violent. This can lead to very real repercussions, as mental health sufferers are 16 times more likely to be shot and killed by police when seeking emergency intervention. Research indicates that “fewer than 5% of the 120,000 gun-related killings in the United States between 2001 and 2010 were perpetrated by people diagnosed with mental illness.”
There is a direct correlation between the increasing number of mass shootings and the rise of white nationalist groups (which increased from 100 chapters in 2017 to 155 in 2019). There have been documented records of members of the US government, congress, military leaders, and law enforcement being sworn participants in white nationalist organizations. This shows how deep and entrenched the reality of white supremacy ideology in America is.
Mass violence against BIPOC people and others is not the result of the actions of a lone mentally unstable gunman, but is part of larger systems of violence which are institutionalized (meaning it’s embedded into American history, laws, society, and our current status quo).
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