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There is a tendency in America to think of people as either winners or losers. Winners possess traits typically associated with normative masculinity and capitalism: in order to win, one must aggressively and competitively pursue career success and wealth at any cost. Sometimes this understanding of being a winner is couched in softer terms, such as “work hard and you can achieve your dream no matter what,” but the conceptual underpinnings are the same.
The roots of our cultural psyche can be traced back, in part, to the Western project of Empire, which valorized and encouraged a particular kind of personhood: the exemplary individual showed aggressive strength but was also guided by rational thinking. Both aggression and the rational mind were presumed inherent within the more advanced Western male psyche, an assumption that helped to justify the colonial project of capitalist expansion: non-Western men were thought to be too weak and not smart enough to exploit their natural resources (or other people) for maximum profit. Within this configuration, anyone associated with weakness or irrationality (e.g. women, non-Western peoples, the elderly, the sick, children) were marked as lesser human beings, while a particular kind of man came to symbolize the ideal unit of productivity.
As a legacy of Empire, the American obsession with productivity and profit has never been greater, and has translated into the obsession with career success and wealth, both of which are understood to reflect the ability to transform oneself into the perfect product—and product-producing being—through hard work. Americans must now strive to not only achieve but to be the best. The best father, the coolest student in school who is captain of the football team and valedictorian, the lawyer who never loses, the spirit that never gives up. Being a winner has come to be seen as a reflection of an exercise in self-care.
Because White masculinity continues to function as a symbol of ideal personhood, it is no surprise that more than any other demographic, young White men have the greatest access to those things that help them to become winners, such as quality education, healthcare, and coveted career opportunities. Nonetheless, neoliberal economic policies and privatization are making such access only available to a minute few. More and more White males are finding themselves in the same disempowered position that their non-White and non-male peers have always been in. At the same time, they are still assumed to be–and assume themselves to be–deserving of and able to avoid the status of “loser.”
As E.A. Cruden points out, the incongruity between “downward mobility” and feelings of entitlement, coupled with the tendency to express frustration through aggression, helps to explain the psychology behind the White male violence. For mass murderers, the disconnect between feelings of entitlement and the reality of their social position is particularly significant: most have been bullied, ostensibly marked as losers by virtue of their reputation as outcasts. They are not perceived to be–and may not think of themselves as–capable of winning. They only way they can win is to punish the social world that they feel has rendered them losers and in doing so reverse processes of emasculation.
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The psychologies of Nikolas Cruz, who carried out the most recent mass murder in Florida, and Elliot Rodger, who killed six people and wounded fourteen in Santa Barbara, are even more complex in relation to White masculinity. Many White males who commit violence or who participate in violent movements often accuse minorities of trying to usurp White privilege. The aspiration to reinstate white supremacy is deeply implicated in their production of harm. This was certainly also true in the cases of Rodger and Cruz. What makes them unusual is the fact that they are not White, yet both were obsessively preoccupied with their proximity–or lack thereof–to whiteness.
Elliot Rodger was the son of a successful White father and Asian mother. Nikolas Cruz, though he self-identifies as White and has light skin, was adopted into a Latino family and is apparently of multiracial ethnic heritage. Both young men, in other words, were mixed, culturally and/or racially. And both men seemed to hate this about themselves. Elliot Rodger was vehemently opposed to interracial dating and despised his features that made him appear Asian. He harbored an intense loathing for men of color who had the “gall” to think that they could win over the supposedly universally-coveted White woman (perhaps he felt that in doing so they were positioning themselves as equally deserving of such an “honor” as he, rendering his own proximity to whiteness tenuous).
According to his teacher, Alicia Blonde, Nikolas Cruz felt deeply ashamed of his Latino heritage. He was unapologetically racist and, like Rodger, was especially disapproving of interracial dating, calling White women who date men of color “traitors.” Both men were bullied by outcasts who perceived their “bad luck” with–and anger toward–women in relation to their social standing and their cultural and/or ethnic identities.
It seems, then, that Rodger and Cruz were attempting to strengthen their alignment to Whiteness (in effect, to “pass” as White) by fighting to preserve the waning privilege of White masculinity, using a blueprint available to “losers” like them: mass murder. Maybe they, along with other mass murderers, see themselves as the foot soldiers for the (White) winners they so desperately want to be accepted by and become.
Where there are foot soldiers there is a war. As long as we continue to wage a war on losers, by putting pressure on our children from day one to be the Best, to go to the best schools and get the best grades and the best jobs, we are continuing to value White masculinity and the traits associated with it: extreme aggressiveness, violent competitiveness, the suppression of compassion. We are continuing to ensure that there will be people who try to harm and subjugate other people and the natural world in order to come out on top. And we are guaranteeing that there will be people who harm themselves. After all, the second leading cause of deaths amongst teenagers is not mass murder but suicide. There will be more mass murders, yes, but there will be even more children out there, feeling like they are losers, hoping to one day become winners.
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Photo Credit: Getty Images