Thursday, March 28, 2024

Dr. Ronald E. Hall/School Shootings as Entitlement Dysfunction: A Loss of White Male Power

school shooting - protest

*In Littleton, Colorado in 1999, at Columbine High School 18 year-old Eric Harris and 17 year-old Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide.

In 2001, 15 year-old Charles Andrew Williams murdered schoolmates Bryan Zuckor and Randy Gordon wounding 13 others at Santana High School in Santee, California.  In the quiet suburb of Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 first graders at a local elementary school.

In 2005, 16 year-old Jeffrey Weise of Red Lake High School in Red Lake, Minnesota killed five students, a teacher, and a security guard before killing himself. Three months ago 2018 a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida killed 17 and wounded many more. Before the victims in Florida had had a chance to mourn the deaths of their loved ones, a few days ago, a suspect named Dimitrios Pagourtzis 17 years-old in Santa Fe, Texas entered Santa Fe High School where he shot and killed 10 wounding 10 others.

The school shootings that have dominated recent TV and radio broadcasts are nothing new in what has captured the whole of America’s attention. In fact, the earliest documented accounts in America of such tragedies took place on July 26, 1764 near what is known today as Greencastle, Pennsylvania (https://www.k12academics.com/school-shootings/history-school-shootings-united-states).  In that long ago, tragedy, 10 children were murdered by gunfire. Unfortunately, America’s love affair with firearms has predisposed recent events that have been repeated continuously over the course of time. And unless there is significant changes in current gun laws, history is more than likely to repeat itself. The question is why.

Entitlement Dysfunction
As gun lobbyists so often remind us: “it’s not guns who kill people, but people who kill people.” The suspect in the Santa Fe shootings is reported to have been an honor student. He played on the football team where he likely had friends. But that same suspect named Dimitrios Pagourtzis had one thing in common with all other previous shooters in the current era. He was middle-class, white, male and lived in one of the better neighborhoods but had no power of his own. His racial status as white male alone he presumed gave him birthright to limitless power. Not having it and feeling powerless, some white male school shooters complained of being bullied, while others are confronted by any number of social problems no less true for black and brown adolescent males many of whom are much less fortunate. But well off black and brown adolescent males for the most part do not commit mass school shootings for seemingly no apparent reason. They confront the same social challenges met by their white peers without resorting to lethal school violence. No doubt black and brown high school males resort to violence. However, their violence is more likely attributed to personal skirmishes, that are here today and gone tomorrow. For young white male school shooters, it is different. Their violence is attributed to society where they fear losing entitlement to power justifies violence. The answer as to why according to a psychiatrist named Chester Pierce is a matter of “entitlement dysfunction.”

school shooting - kid on stretcher

In 1978, Dr. Pierce published a paper in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry. Dr. Pierce was a black man whose life experience had exposed him to the ravages of limitless white male power motivating him to study it. That limitless power was designated by him as Entitlement Dysfunction. The theme pertains to the dynamics of “human interactions” when impacted by a sense of entitlement. This sense of entitlement impairs the ability of white males to act rationally putting young lives at risk. Most importantly, entitlement that is associated with power and selfish ends according to Pierce will predispose the irrational to subjugate all but their personal interests. Given the unbridled power that white males have been known to have, the prospect of entitlement then allows for the welfare of self personally and exclusively at the expense of all others. Having such power in the American South was acted out during segregation. In smoke stack industries of the urban North it was acted out by blacks last hired, and blacks first fired. All told, there were any number of institutionalized white male personal advantages, that were in fact both illegal and un-Constitutional. With this white male power frame of mind, a sensed loss-of-power has brought an unprecedented number of school shootings and the murder of innocent, unarmed students on school grounds.

White Male Power
In America, white males are and always have been the focus and major sources of limitless power. In carrying out such power, they continue to control our most highly ranked of institutions including the economy, our universities, the courts and every considerable facet of the U.S. government. No major amount of wealth, intellectual prowess or political office is accessible without the approval of white male power. But lately America has been in the midst of significant social change. In the aftermath of a black president and an influx of eager, non-white immigrants from Asia, Africa, and South America, white males have begun to experience an overwhelming sense of losing power. This is so while in fact still maintaining power. Unfortunately, especially among those of the white male working class, who lack a college education or access to higher paying job prospects feel the pinch of shedding power. This pinch is less significant for the more able among white males who are unlikely prone to violence. Unfortunately, the less able among them despise populations they once segregated or hired only after all white males were working and they are not happy about it. Their feelings of threat are attributed to their obsession with measuring their worth in being white and male only. Being white and male, was once assessed as a talent, a skill and an otherwise exclusive birthright. Reaching back in time when they were the locus of power, white males today celebrate calls to build a wall with Mexico, to reverse the policies of our first black president and most dramatically worship their possession of guns in the preservation of gun rights. These are just a few of the many last ditch efforts to reverse an oncoming trend (https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article193285194.html).

Guns and Power
As Dr. Pierce would contend, guns are the psychological purity of power. In the midst of an unarmed gathering, those who possess firearms possess potent power, which Freud associates with sex (https://openworks.wooster.edu/psychology_is/5/). Thus, one of the first things that a psychiatrist learns in medical school is that guns are also a phallic symbol by which feelings of lost potency can be rescued (https://www.salon.com/1999/05/12/penises/).  In the world of bovines, the potency of power gives the dominant bull exclusive access to any and all mating privileges. That white males are no longer the dominant societal bulls they once were leaves them overcome with fears of impotency. These feelings of impotency by the white male working class in particular is exposed by their fear of competition with blacks, with immigrants and even women all of whom they once dominated. Overcome by feelings of impotence they provide a textbook explanation of the male psyche rooted in the possession and exercise of power. When they have the gun, they are entitled!

The adolescent school shooters of today are on the cutting edges of impotency in feeling a loss of white male power. Black and brown males feel less threatened, having symbolic avenues to avoid threat in boxing, football and other potent “manly” sports. School shooters are limited in their access to symbolic expressions. While their atrocious acts are local, their perceived loss of power has been felt by similarly threatened white males nationwide. Lest we forget, America was founded on the possession of firearms via the Revolutionary War. The gun brought enough power to a mangy band of white male settlers to proclaim in a most potent exercise of power that America would be an independent sovereignty that could not be forced to pay tribute to British royalty. And so it is that young white male school shooters confronted by a perceived loss of power deem themselves potent through violent acts. In taking aim, they are committed to end the lives of those who would challenge what they deem by entitlement the birthright to dysfunction.

ronald e hall
Dr. Ronald E. Hall

As an internationally known scholar, Dr. Ronald E. Hall testified as an expert witness in the nation’s first skin color discrimination case involving African Americans i.e.: Morrow vs. IRS. Shortly after he co-authored the widely read Color Complex: The Last Taboo Among African Americans. In 2003 Dr. Hall received the Adele Mellen Prize for Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship for Skin Color as a Post-Colonial Issue Among Asian-Americans. Because of his expertise, Dr. Hall has been sought after by various agencies for lectures at home and abroad including Stanford University (Palo Alto), McGill University (Montreal), Pennsylvania State University (State College), Oxford University (United Kingdom), and the U.S. Congress (Washington, D.C.). Dr. Hall’s work has been featured by numerous media such as TIME, The Boston Globe, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Detroit News, The Chicago Tribune, Essence, The Sally Jesse Rafael Show, Oprah, and BET. In January 2015 Dr. Hall appeared in the Oprah Winfrey documentary “Light Girls” regarding skin color and African-American women. Additionally, Dr. Hall has worked as project associate for a number of urban education school projects focusing on issues related to school reform primarily in the state of Michigan. His role included oversight in the collection of qualitative data and conduct of focus groups. He has also served in the capacity of grant assessment for the National Science Foundation. Contact Dr. Hall via: [email protected].

 

We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!

YOU MAY LIKE

SEARCH

- Advertisement -

TRENDING