No surprise racism lurked underneath mass murderer’s rage

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
New America Media Columnist

There was no surprise that in between U.C. Santa Barbara’s mass murderer Elliot Rodger’s warped, sick, and perverse harangues against women, he also laced in a generous dose of racist rage and stereotyping.

I passed by this restaurant and I saw this Black guy chilling with 4 hot white girls. He didn’t even look good. Then later on in the day I was shopping at Trader Joe’s and saw an Indian guy with 2 above average White Girls!!!

He returns to these hate mongering digs at Black, Hispanic and Asian-American men for having the temerity to associate with white women, and worse their reciprocation with minority men more than a few times.

Rodger’s murderous psychosis is certainly evident in these rants. But that doesn’t tell the whole story of why a conflicted mixed-race young guy would act out his rage in a deadly spree against innocents. The racial targeting can well be chalked up to ignorance, confusion, racial denial, and closet bigotry. But there have been several compelling hints that the racial blinders are tied chokingly tight on many whites, particularly young whites, as well as those who are conflicted about race, such as Rodger.

Racial digs that mock Blacks, Latinos and Asians have been a common feature on more than a few college campuses in recent times. There’s the wave of fraternities that have been called on the carpet for mocking Black notables and rappers, holding slave auctions, minstrel shows, displaying the Confederate flag in front of frat dorms, and for their members sporting the flag on T-shirts. Many have also been reprimanded for their vicious mocking of Latin and Asian immigrants. This was not merely a free speech issue, or a case of zany college kids making utter fools of each other. This was blatant racial slander.

An AP poll in 2012 also found that a majority of non-Blacks had anti-Black prejudices. But it also found that a significant number of those who held the same prejudices and outright bigoted views were in the under age 30 crowd. That’s precisely the age demographic of Rodger. His rants proved once more that bigotry, with all its twisted, warped, and psychotic delusions, fears and hates can explode any time, and anywhere in the orgy of murderous rampages that Americans are getting far too accustomed to seeing, and being victimized by. Rodger’s “Manifesto” tell that same sordid tale once more.

This article originally published in the June 2, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.