The Question

[khiemtran]

Last week, all of Australia was shocked by a tragic event in Melbourne. On a sweltering hot day, in the middle of a record heatwave, a father got out of his car on the West Gate Bridge, an iconic structure and the tallest in Melbourne, picked up his three year old daughter from the back seat and dropped her over the railing.

As the week unfolded, details gradually emerged of an estranged family and a custody dispute. Commenters railed one way and the other either demanding vengeance for an unspeakable crime, or calling for compassion in a tragic situation.

At the same time, for many thousands of people, as it emerged that the father was a white, Anglo, middle class IT worker, there was also The Question. Had it been someone of my ethnic group or religion, would the debate have been the same? If the man had been a Koori or a Somali or a Vietnamese or a Muslim, would the soul searching have been about "them" or "us"?

Comments

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

At the same time, for many thousands of people, as it emerged that the father was a white, Anglo, middle class IT worker, there was also The Question. Had it been someone of my ethnic group or religion, would the debate have been the same? If the man had been a Koori or a Somali or a Vietnamese or a Muslim, would the soul searching have been about "them" or "us"?

In a case like this, people very much want to say 'I would not do this, my friends and family would not do this, my *partner* would not do this' and so they're looking for a way to distinguish themselves from the perpetrator. And they usually find something - whether social habits, belonging to a subculture, drugs, class, origin (racial, ethnic, or more localized). My expectation is that if people could have found an easy way of distinguishing themlseves from this guy, they would have latched onto it, otherwise they'd have to face the fact that yes, this *could* be them (or their close friends, family, partners.) I think this is probably a universal, eg women saying 'well, it's always men' etc.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

That is so awful. There was a case last year in the UK of a man who grabbed his children and jumped off a balcony with them (he and one child survived, one died) and we've have suicide/murders before, but never a case where a father so apparently cold-bloodedly killed a child for no reason that anyone could see. I wonder if a post-mortem will be able to tell whether the internal injuries were inflicted before the little girl was thrown off the bridge or whether they were sustained in the fall?

As to the race thing, we've had enough examples of white Britich fathers killing their children or even their entire families that I don't think it would be a particular issue.

Hoever, this sort of incident is the reason why women who are separated or divorced are often very reluctant to let the father have the children, even for a day out.