Would the public reaction to the Littleton shooting have been different if Littleton was a black, inner city neighborhood?

I think it would have received about 5 minutes on the evening news. Most US murders occur in exactly that type of neighborhood, but poor, black people dying apparently isn't newsworthy.
I think that a lot of the Littleton coverage was driven by a need for people to explain away how it couldn't happen to them or their children.

I also think that the blame would not have been put on a gun culture. They would have placed the blame, quite erroneously, on the black American culture. The blame is and should be on the culture of non-accountability we have developed in America.

after all, it's not your fault you fired that gun. It's your congressperson's fault for not passing a law to stop you from buying it.

It's not your congressperson's responsibility for you to be accountable for your actions. In our culture of non-accountability we do not feel that anyone should be accountable for anyone's actions, no one holds the blame. Parents aren't responsible for their children, how could they be? They aren't responsible for their own actions. It's like living with a bunch of infants. Bleh.

When are the nukes going to start flying? It's time to let the roaches run the place.

less coverage, less sympathetic, about equally outraged but in a different way.

Sadly, I believe there would not have been as much of a fuss....

jjg - I was being sarcastic.

Imagine if the 2 kids who killed all those white kids where black...

I think it would have been quite different. It is all in the location. Check the back pages of the front section of your newspaper; a bomb might have killed 40 people on the other side of the world today. Why wasn't it on the front? Because the conditions in those societies make the occurrences there seem unsurprising. The same goes for crime-ridden inner city America. If it happened there, nobody would be surprised. Good survey.

I think there would have been no coverage, period. And the attitude would be blase, meaning "Oh, how typical."

weirdly organized survey.

i think i have to go back to the central park jogger case in NYC a bunch of years ago while i still lived and worked in NYC. after a week or two of the news coverage there was an outcry from the poorer/more inner city(if there is such a thing in NYC)/black neighborhoods-- woman were raped in those areas on a regular basis and at the same time as the CP case there were a rash of women raped and then thrown from the tops of the apartment buildings that they happend in!!! all without any news coverage or mention!! this is the most prominent case i can remember and knew that other cases that were just as horrific were completely over looked..... and the only difference was that the victim was a wall street banker, white, middle to upper class. so with this out there, yes, i do think the coverage would have been much different. i think it would have been covered but the tone would have been much different! many events/crimes like these happen in inner city neighborhoods everyday without us ever hearing about them because they are one on one/two as opposed to the numbers killed in littleton.

The very reason the story was so shocking is because people felt like "that sort of thing just doesn't happen in a nice town like Littleton". I feel that the media tends to sensationalize the news far too much in an attempt to get people to listen (buy their newspaper, watch their channel, etc.) and I worry that in this case it may prompt other disturbed teens to pull similar stunts if they think it can attract so much attention.

It depends, if it was 2 black gunmen shooting black school kids in an inner city school, the media would've shown it as another gangland shooting. If 2 blacks killed white kids in a predominantly white school, it would be seen as a racist attack. So, it is hard to say how the media would have perceived it. Were the gunmen black or white ?

Anyone who thinks race doesn't matter tell me what Jackson State University is famous for.

hint: today (Saturday, May 15) is the 29th anniversary of the event I'm thinking of.

The Kent State tragedy (May 4, 1970), where 4 white student war protesters where killed by the Ohio National Guard, was followed by a May 15th shooting at Jackson State University in Mississippi where two black students were killed. To protest what the students felt was a lack of sympathy for the death of these students, black students blocked the entrance to University Hall on Monday, May 18. President Carlson met with a group of these students, and agreed to hire more black faculty and graduate assistants and start a Black Studies program.
[ I love searching the web for answers... ]

My alma mater has no black male faculty at all. The administrators give various excuses for that, but they still haven't hired a single black male faculty member.

I don't think WPI had any black professors... maybe I just didn't notice, but I can't think of any. Only a handful of women too.

I think there would have been less coverage, and the public would have been less outraged. It's like the media expects this to happen to a black, inner city neighborhood.

bill: but the women professors were really aggressive and demanding.

Jen: I always thought Mary Hardell looked like Lady Bracknell.