thanks because as I was reading I was thinking how to summarize this. Saying you are shocked it came from the community is fairly different than saying you had hoped that if something like this happened it was not somone from the community.
I think it’s less of a clean split than you’re making it. The statements I listed show both. Sometimes leaders stress, “he was one of our own,” sometimes they stress how “this is not who we are.” Neither is pure ownership nor pure cowardice; they’re rhetorical tools for different purposes: unity, deflection, grieving, or political cover.
If anything, the very fact that they have to insist “this isn’t us” suggests they’re already grappling with the same discomfort you’re pointing out. It’s just a more polite way of saying “we wish it had been someone else’s problem.”
Either way, it’s not coded anti-immigrant language.
Not one of those says “I wish they had been from somewhere else.”
There’s a huge difference between “we have to acknowledge it was one of us” and “I wish they had been from somewhere else.”
One takes ownership of the failure of the society, the other cowardly tries to avoid the failure.
thanks because as I was reading I was thinking how to summarize this. Saying you are shocked it came from the community is fairly different than saying you had hoped that if something like this happened it was not somone from the community.
I think it’s less of a clean split than you’re making it. The statements I listed show both. Sometimes leaders stress, “he was one of our own,” sometimes they stress how “this is not who we are.” Neither is pure ownership nor pure cowardice; they’re rhetorical tools for different purposes: unity, deflection, grieving, or political cover.
If anything, the very fact that they have to insist “this isn’t us” suggests they’re already grappling with the same discomfort you’re pointing out. It’s just a more polite way of saying “we wish it had been someone else’s problem.”
Either way, it’s not coded anti-immigrant language.