Cross-Racial Serial Predators / woc victims

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

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I've always thought that it was outdated, and very dangerous, considering the reality of colonialism and the fetishization of minority women as prey*.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I read a while ago, which stipulates that any assumption that the perp will be the same race as the victim is an outdated assumption due to the retirement of segregation and increased population density - mainly that a prevalence of same-race (and class) predation was a matter of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

Comments

[rainbow-goddess.livejournal.com]

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.

[kwerkee.livejournal.com]

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.

[kwerkee.livejournal.com]

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

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

[gsyh.livejournal.com]

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?

[kwerkee.livejournal.com]

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.