criminalxminds | Cross-Racial Serial Predators / woc victims

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Cross-Racial Serial Predators / woc victims

What do you make of Criminal Minds's repeated assertions that the serial killer in question have to be in the same race as that of his(/her) victims, to the point of completely ignoring other possibilities, like in "Fear and Loathing"? I haven't seen all the episodes yet (is there one or more that featured a cross racial serial sex killer?)

Trigger Warning: real cases of sexual assault and murder being discussed, also colonialism

I've always thought that it was outdated, and very dangerous, considering the reality of colonialism and the fetishization of minority women as prey*. In show, a majority of the victims are white, but IRL, there is a serial killer on the Highway of Tears preying predominantly on Aboriginal women, and gods, if the police are sticking to the same-race-serial-killer theory...they are going to miss Jeffrey Dahmer.

I think this was in "There's No Place Like Home" (or another episode that reaired recently), Spencer quoted Jeffrey Dahmer as a part of his long argument about how serial killers usually hunt within their own race (Dahmer being included because he hunted within his own orientation). Ummmmmm, Jeffrey Dahmer is pretty significant in that a LOT of Dahmer's victims were men of colour while he himself was white! It could be a matter of geographic availability - or, Easier Victim - one time, a 13 yr old Asian boy almost got away from him, but the police chose to believe the blond Dahmer's word that 13 was actually 18 and he was Dahmer's boyfriends being high, Dahmer's words over the 13 yr old Asian boy AND two black women who keep trying to get the police to intervene (it ends with that kid being killed right after the police left).

Then there is Gary Heidnik, who was white, but all the women he kept as captives in his basement were African American.

Robert Pickton, the Vancouver pig farmer, many of his victims were also aboriginal women even though he himself was white.

Race Flip example: Carlton Gray - The Columbus, Georgia Stocking Strangler, Gray was a young black man who targeted elderly white women.

.....and I wish I could find the article I read a while ago, which stipulates that any assumption that the perp will be the same race as the victim is an outdated assumption due to the retirement of segregation and increased population density - mainly that a prevalence of same-race (and class) predation was a matter of availability.

It just bothers me, that CM, which was otherwise progressive in so many ways, in shattering myths and giving agency and voice to female victims, to the homeless, prostitutes, geeks and queers, would be well, missing out on this one.

Overall, I'll really like more episodes where the victims are marginalized people please - especially women of colour, but only if we are written with as much agency as the other female victims. CM got me hooked on episode one with the chained up woman who kicked at her captor.

* when fetish isn't harmless:
- For Asian women, 'fetish' is less than benign
BY SALLIE KIM, SHANNON STOCKDALE
Thursday, April 14, 2005
" For example, in 2000, two Japanese college women were abducted, raped, videotaped and told that if they told anybody what had happened, the videotapes would be sent to their fathers. The three white assailants admitted targeting Asian women precisely because they had a sexual fetish for "submissive" Asian women, but also because they believed that this same submissiveness and cultural shame would prevent the women from reporting the assaults. "

* Missing Aboriginal Women prompt UN letter

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I agree with you that yes it is possible for cross-racial serial sex killers. And yes women tend to look more like victims on the show even though in real life the most likely to be victimized are white males.

On the flip side it is also true that killers tend to kill within their own race. I took a Crime and Society class this past quarter where we discussed this issue and the stats that were given were that the majority of the time whites kill whites, blacks kill blacks, etc etc etc. Do they kill other races? Absolutely but the majority of the time it happens within a specific race.

As far as a cross racial killer in Season One there was an episode entitled "The Fox" and he was a white male and a family inhalator. One of the families he killed was a black family with a white stepfather. Also in Season 6 there was an episode entitled "Big Sea" and there were many different races and genders within the pile of bones they found. I know there is at least one more with a sexual sadist that crossed racial boundaries but I don't recall which one it was.

So in conclusion yes, I think they tend to stick to serial killers targeting within their own race but they do not completely ignore it all together.

...cause I have been working on ancedotes, which was

1. quite a few cases I came across feature white serial killers with minority victims

2. in colonial studies, sexual abuse was covered as a part of colonial abuse, that's cross racial sexual predation

On the male versus female victims of violence thing, that's another need more stats but what stats do we have to work with here? Men are more likely than women to be murdered, but what about violence where there was no body? Such as sexual assault - which tend to not be taken seriously until there was a body.

I have to say I was surprised by the unsub of "Fear and Loathing", I thought they were setting up the BAU to be wrong about race, the way they have been wrong about gender before. Especially since choir girl could be a racial fetishization trope, or the very least, objectification. I remember a snippet with an ethnically African female reporter who said she had great difficulty in getting the make-up people to give her a subtle professional look her white female colleagues have, as oppose to something that makes her look like a chorus girl.

...and then we have IRL's Profiler Profiled: Penn State:

blackvoicenews.com/commentary/more-commentary/47112-penn-state-how-many-of-the-victims-were-black.html

I'm saying that, I've seen CM address exploitation or disparity on a social scale by covering unsub who does it on a criminal scale...
-
"Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime." - Maximilien Robespierre

Jane Gould exploited psychologically fragile woman to make herself feel powerful.

Charles Holcombe exploited people who lived or worked on the streets to satisfy his sadism.

...and then there was "25 to Life"...I dunno how I feel about the execution, but I applaud them for trying.

Anything is possible. The allegation is based on criminal history. Anything else is a waste of time---it's a fictional tv show. If you really want reality shows, watch INDIS or History channel.

in episode 4 of season 1 the team briefly argues this point, because they arrest a young black guy for the rape and murder of white surburban housewives (but he does turn out to be a rapist). one of them (Morgan I think) says that this being their UnSub is highly unlikely, because that would be cross-racial, but then Reid argues that there have been examples of this happening. i do believe Hotch or Gideon quickly puts this conversation to an end.

Ha, I like Hotch and Gideon, but I'm of the opinion that while their experience is vastly useful and right most of the time, unlike Reid, they are sometimes blind to outlying possibilities.

"Plain Sight" eh? That's actually another episode in which cross racial predation would have made sense (but I guess it's been avoided so far because of the Molotov quality of the subject matter). It was already a socio-politically driven murder - motivated by resentment in class difference.

It's just, maybe it's because I live in Toronto, in Canada, but from the daily news coverage, assumption of same-race predation would be very frequently proven wrong.

As someone up there said, it's a fictional show and although they take real things into account, they make up whatever they want for the sake of a fictional TV show.

They also use overly simplified versions of things for their "profiles".

In the end, they probably aren't too interested in spending a lot of time on minor details like that.

...for all the reason stated in the post, and one of the above comments.

...because I know it is fictional, I'm not going to question The Jet! Or even the realism of Tobias Hankel because it made for such compelling storytelling.

Being fictional doesn't mean it gets an all pass, just as being fictional didn't stop Criminal Minds from ribbing on the Stranger Danger myth!

You bring up a lot of really good points. Fundamentally, I think that CM occasionally.. makes problematic assumptions about race, unintentionally. Likely it's related to the fact that the majority of the writers (or perhaps all? I can't remember) are white. I object to the idea that we, as fans, shouldn't be analyzing this shit because it's a fictional TV show or whatever- this stuff impacts us, and it impacts the way we view race and how we view crime and victimhood in real life. This stuff is important. The fact that it's not intentional doesn't make it less problematic. Thanks for your thoughts!

I object to the idea that we, as fans, shouldn't be analyzing this shit because it's a fictional TV show or whatever- this stuff impacts us

Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding!

Especially since, damn, even though it SHOULDN'T, TV shows affect the way people think about things, and law enforcement are people too. I fucking LOVE how CM disprove and smack down assumptions about prostitutes and rape victims, and I would like to see that extended more towards women who aren't white.

...and um, speaking as one woman who isn't white and does not live a charmed sheltered life, there have been many situations where I have felt unsafe, and the people who targeted me were not all Chinese like me, in fact, I think I only remember being groped by someone who was Chinese ONCE - because I don't tend to hang around predominantly Chinese areas (supporting that it's not race (except when it is, familiarity/fetish), it's availability,).

It would suck if a certain somewhat douchey ex of mine (imma saying he has major anger issues, he badmouthed every single one of his ex, he was paranoid that an ex of his was watching him and pointed him out to me and to me it looked like the ex couldn't even shim him, he felt entitled to my time and body, he hold me to 'promises' that I never made and get scary angry when I don't), who happens to be white, were to be harmful to me but the police don't suspect HIM because hey he's not a member of the Chinese community!

(deleted comment)

During the Altanta child murders, I believe a lot of people assumed the killer was white. If I recall correctly -- I read a book about it a few years ago, but I can't remember everything -- black children were more likely to trust another black person than a white person.

I wish I have a name and links to go with this but maybe, someone knows who I'm talking about.

I think I read it from a compilation book of serial killers. It was interesting because it was the first case where I read that real life experts got a race profile wrong.

A serial killer was on the loose in a middle class white neighbourhood. Nobody saw anything unusual on their streets. Profilers said they were looking for a white guy because he seemed to know and blend in with the neighbourhood. Surprise, surprise, it was a young black male. Nobody found him suspicious because he used to come around and help fix things.

Edited 2011-12-21 01:18 (UTC)

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Oh, I was agreeing with you! Most unsubs choose what's available to them and whether they could get away with it.

Funny personal story, or not.

I've this relative who was kinda discouraging when I got an interview with this really awesome company (it didn't work out, but oh I wanted it), her reason: it has brown people.

FROWNY FACE

That relative in question was overjoyed for me when I later got a job at a very old money WASP neighbourhood, because Henry VIII totally doesn't count as a serial killer because it was LEGAL! Plus, um, said old money WASP neighbourhood was affluent enough that they believe in hired help for everything - this means that unlike MY neighbourhood (full of immigrants that make my relative worried), where people stay and live and relatively knew each other - said old money WASP neighbourhood has a regular traffic of strangers that no one else knew (of every color too, like me, who was not white).

Strangers of every colour (usually a racial minority though) going out of a neighbour's house in that area was not out of the ordinary.

Okay, racial profiling makes sense if a victim remembers the race of the attacker, but I dunno how helpful it is to guess at it from what race the victims are or as a part of the unsub's other characteristics (unless language is involved I guess).

Like, okay, the remake of Star Trek spawned a discussion about modern remake Spock/Uhura versus Proudly Single Lady Uhura of the classics, and an lj poster who was black said that black women have very different issues than white women in terms of being judged on romance / career, said poster said that classic!Uhura wasn't single because she was independent - she was single because her co-stars were white and interracial pairing was scandalous back then.

...with that in mind, even discounting colonialism (which includes cross racial sexual predation), wouldn't it make sense that there will be more cross racial sex crime now that cross racial relationships and desires are more acceptable and common?

Dahmer's the most 'colour-blind' serial killer (whites, blacks, asians, even a hispanic iirc). Even then, it was not about race to him. His neighbourhood was not predominantly white. Not only were non-whites readily available, he had non-suspicious access to them. (ps: I think it was about physical attributes. He had a thing for lean torsos and limbs).

So again, it's more of availability of victims and whether they can get away with it.

I think the reason for the large number of aboriginal women being victimized is that due to the inherent racism and colonialism present in Canadian society, especially when it comes to First Nations people, aboriginal women are often extremely vulnerable and this makes them easy targets.

Serial killers target vulnerable populations, and aboriginal women are relatively more vulnerable due to persistent present-day racism, AND, the lasting consequences of the decade long wholesale kidnapping of aboriginal children by the government - the Residential School, even if you don't count the rampant sexual and physical abuse, fuck, I can't remember who, but there was an American who worked on Native Americans who took one look at the RS program, and said - there couldn't be enough food.

In some cases, minorities are targeted just because they happen to be vulnerable, but there is also a colonial context where they are targeted because they are acceptable victims, like girls in short skirts.

Christ, the Gary Hernik case, he wanted to keep women as his sex slaves, and, all the women he kept prisoners in his basement were ethnically African. That I think, all of them had worked in the sex industry made them more vulnerable, but I think that race was probably a part of his fantasy.

I want the CM show to cover more WOC and marginalized victims, because it seem to me, that society is shocked when a crime is committed upon the sheltered, because then, it is definitely a crime, but when it's the marginalized people, it's Life As Usual. I love what CM did by calling out some stuff as NOT OKAY NOT ACCEPTABLE NORMAL, such as bullying, can I be greedy for more?

Oh, hearts hearts hearts to the people who did the episode "The Last Word", victims, be they poor or be they rich, they don't deserve it, no amount of resentment towards someone's good luck ("The Perfect Storm", that was the female unsub's motive) or contempt for 'their stations in life' ("Sex, Birth, and Death", "Legacy"), justify crime against someone who did you no ill will.

Mind if I link to this discussion on

racebending?

Go ahead.

The same problem in the U.S. is one theme in the upcoming film Road to Paloma (http://texanbeauty.activeboard.com/t41413527/road-to-paloma/), directed by and starring Jason Momoa of Stargate: Atlantis fame.

That movie, I Dunno.

Like, okay, first turn off: woman's trauma used as a cause for vengeance by a man.

It could be much better than it sounds, but um:

1. When the law failed to convict the man who brutally raped his mother, Wolf (half-Lakota, half-Caucasion) took it upon himself to claim vengeance-killing the man,

2. .......

3. ???

4. Sharing common passions of motorcycles, whiskey and blues music, Cash joins Wolf on his journey. Their experiences on the road forge an indelible friendship as the two rip across the open country, hurtling towards their destiny.

Maybe this was just a case of terrible summaries.

I don't see anyone on this thread who has statistics on cross-racial serial killing. I know, as mentioned above, that crime in general predominantly occurs within one race, not across races.

I'm sure someone has the statistics, but I don't know where they are. In the absence of those and an analysis of how they were gathered, we're all blowing smoke and no conclusions should be drawn.

P.S. - I'm female, half-Asian and half-white, and identify as Asian. This is the statistics geek and former lawyer talking.

Sexual Assault Murders in the United States

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/SOO.PDF
About 8 out of 10 sexual assault murders were intraracial. White victims and white offenders accounted for 55% of sexual assault murders, black victims and black offenders accounted for 24% of all murders involving sexual assault, 2% involved black victims and white offenders, 15% involved white victims and black offenders, and the remainder involved victims and offenders of other races.

....and now, I need to go dig up the Canadian stats.

While the results support the thesis that crime is mostly aimed at those of the same race as the offender, not much can be gleaned from them with respect to the kinds of crimes the actual BAU investigates, not all of which are sexual assault murders.

Thank you for making an attempt at statistical analysis, but isn't serial killing what dominates the BAU's caseload? Without statistics on those kinds of crimes, we're still just speculating.

Edited 2011-12-23 02:32 (UTC)

(deleted comment)

Sexual Assault Murders in the United States

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/SOO.PDF
About 8 out of 10 sexual assault murders were intraracial. White victims and white offenders accounted for 55% of sexual assault murders, black victims and black offenders accounted for 24% of all murders involving sexual assault, 2% involved black victims and white offenders, 15% involved white victims and black offenders, and the remainder involved victims and offenders of other races.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Cross-Racial Serial Predators / woc victims

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I really wish I'll know where to look on stats

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i do believe Hotch or Gideon quickly puts this conversation to an end.

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Um, I don't think THIS details is minor though

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analysis

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re: Nobody found him suspicious because he used to come around and help fix things.

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Probably a combo hitter

Re: Probably a combo hitter

Re: Probably a combo hitter

A project that might interest you...

Re: A project that might interest you...

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