The universal harm of playing the blame game

After a human-caused tragedy, we always look for whom to blame. This goes beyond identifying the perpetrator.

When Robert Bowers ended the lives of 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh last October, many pointed out the killer's choice of social-media sites. For one such site, gab.com, the consequence was the blacklisting of its smartphone app by Google and Apple.

More focused, though, was the public's attention on the things the killer had said on social media. He had engaged in anti-Semitic conversations, criticizing and blaming "the Jews" for many of the world's problems — to Bowers, a threat to be acted upon. His targeted judgment of the group had led to the belief that everyone within it was guilty.

Such acts of mass blaming are rightly and loudly cited in incidents such as the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, the New Zealand Al Noor Mosque massacre (Islamophobia) and the Pulse Nightclub massacre (homophobia). But the phenomenon is not just a fault of those espousing right-wing ideology.

Recently, a 23-year-old black New York man was arraigned in court for committing a severely violent and sexual act on a 20-year-old white woman.

The races of the two aren't significant until motive comes into play. According to the criminal complaint, an acquaintance of the perpetrator arrived at the scene and saw the woman's body. The perpetrator then allegedly said, "She was a white girl. She deserved it because us minorities have been through slavery. This is what they used to do to us."

It's impossible to know whether this particular act was inspired by the increasingly prevalent judgment of white people in America today. But the chances of such acts being inspired by this movement do increase with its volume. And it is voluminous, in part because publicly uttering anti-black (or -Muslim or -gay) language will get one ostracized, while the reaction to anti-white positions, due to the history of white dominance in the U.S., is often quite the opposite. Twitter is home to several verified accounts of those who have denounced all white people. The term "whiteness" used in many media outlets and courses on "whiteness studies" offered at several universities assign negative connotations to Caucasians, assigning fault to anyone born white.

Worse, it sets the stage for acts such as those described above.

Any blanket blaming is harmful, because it inevitably ensnares innocents. It's also potentially self-defeating and can leave little to no energy for a helpful solution (to say nothing of cooperation with the group to which you're assigning blame) to the specific problem.

Having a particular population as punching bag is a normal part of our social makeup, extending to all manner of groups, ranging from the politically or geographically based to the activity-based (hunters, musicians, bikers, lawyers, farmers). Often such stereotypes and judgments occur with seemingly little to no harm done. But the more serious the situation, the more dangerous the blame game can become. And even if the game is played lightly, we're still engaged in something negative, divisive and unproductive.