Week 5 - Leigh Bagood

Leigh Bagood

Section 2

Week 5

Prior to reading “Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence” by Darrell Y. Hamamoto, I had never considered the correlation between escalating numbers of serial and mass murder and sociocultural conditions in the U.S. It makes sense for civilian violence to increase in postwar societies with “state ‘legitimation’ of violence,” especially during the Vietnam war. I think this article provides extremely important insight, especially during a time where discourses about gun control and the criminalization of people of color (especially Black Americans and Muslim Americans) are so prevalent. I think the idea that most serial killers and mass murderers are predominantly white males is substantially glossed over by those in power, resulting in the discriminatory criminalization of non-whites who are victimized by the stereotypical societal perceptions imposed on them. In addition, the gun issue which questions the availability of semiautomatic weapons, and etc. is often disregarded as a symptom of the hyper-militarization of our society. What also strikes me is the normalization of violence against people of color. I say normalized because these cases are either ignored, justified, or not viewed as racialized and so we fail to acknowledge white supremacist mechanisms that persist.

Question: Is the sexual violence against “yellow women” a result or cause of the docile and submissive Asian woman stereotype?

References:

1. Hamamoto, Y. Darrell. “Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence.” Masters of War: Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire, by Carl Boggs, Routledge, 2003, pp. 277-292.
2. Zyglis, A. (n.d.). A Field Guide to Civil Unrest [Digital image]. Retrieved October 21, 2017, from https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c3/3f/75/c33f75a0b27f82467b2c85206c6ac49d--black-lives-matter-all-lives-matter.jpg