“A Perverse Kind of Sense”: Urban Spaces, Ghetto Places and the Discourse of School Shootings

Abstract

School shootings loom large in the collective imagination and young, White males commit a majority of these horrific crimes. Although many of the descriptions of school shooters in the media and scholarly studies attribute their actions to psychological problems and/or personal/social failings, these events are also often placed in a comparative stance with urban crime, despite being an unrelated sociological phenomenon. The discourses describing these school shootings reproduce stereotypical notions of blackness, rooted in senseless violence, rampant sexuality, poor work ethic, a lack of strong morality and the supposedly degenerate nature of urban crime and “ghetto” culture. The author argues these conceptions have a historical lineage dating back to European colonization and demonstrates the necessity for examining contemporary urban issues within a postcolonial context. This type of critical analysis exposes deficit discourses surrounding urban spaces, places and people of color, allowing for resistance to these types of dominant representations.