Looking out: Deadly 'isms'
By Brandon Astor Jones
Brian Head is dead. Many of his classmates attended his funeral, held at the Hillcrest Baptist Church in Acworth, Georgia.
On March 25 the stocky 15-year-old took the family pistol to school concealed inside his book bag. There he confronted one of his tormentors, who had been teasing him incessantly about his weight. Brian, no longer able to take the teasing, pulled the pistol from his bag and pointed it at his tormentor. "I'm tired of it", he said.
All of the students ran out of the classroom, including the student Brian was pointing the pistol at. Soon there was no-one left in the classroom with Brian except the teacher. Brian must have felt all hope was lost, because he quickly turned the pistol on himself and pulled the trigger.
Brian endured an endless stream of abuse about his weight. The official cause of his death states "suicide." In my opinion nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that everyone at Etowah High School, long before March 25, took part in Brian's death:(a) the students who were doing the teasing; (b) the other students who silently stood by and allowed/supported it; (c) the school administrators and faculty members, many of whom knew what he was going through.
The following week, of course, Etowah High School increased the number of its counsellors to deal with the grief that Brian's classmates must certainly have endured. The students themselves have presented to their principal a petition requesting that walk-through metal detectors be installed at the school, despite the fact that several hand-held detectors are already in use at the school.
Usually, I am of the opinion that the bright young minds in this world are far more progressive in their thinking than their parents. However, in this case the students in question have taken an unenlightened approach in response to this tragedy. If their principal, as a result of their petition, installs the walk-through metal detectors, the effect — as far as addressing the problem is concerned — will be the same as a dog chasing its tail.
Regrettably, the students seem to have chosen to categorise this tragedy as a criminal one. They are just as misguided as those people who think more prisons will solve or ease the crime problem: more time, money and energy is being spent on locking the barn door after the horse has run away than is spent on keeping it from running in the first place.
This is not a crime issue, despite the fact that it is being mistreated as such. This is clearly a "people issue" that speaks volumes on society's willingness to accept and actually promote prejudiced "isms" on many different levels. A long list of dehumanising "isms" — fat-ism, thin-ism, sexism and racism, to name but a few — are routinely perpetrated by the most ignorant members of society.
The greater shame is not so much that these and other prejudices are practised by that ignorant minority, but rather that the intelligent majority all too quietly stand by and allow them to do it. If as much time, money and energy had been spent on Brian Head's feelings as will probably be spent on the walk-through metal detectors (and which should be spent on educating the millions of others who feel it is not routinely necessary to consider one another's feelings), that young man would still be with us.
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He is happy to receive letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G2-51, GD&CC, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]