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Our disturbing impulse to blame the Charlottesville driver's mother for his actions
Naomi ChaineyPublished: August 17 2017 - 8:02AM
In the aftermath of violent and deadly clashes at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia – ostensibly held in protest over the removal of a Confederate statue – reporters tracked down Samantha Bloom, mother of 20-year-old James Alex Fields, who allegedly ploughed his car into a group of counter-protesters, killing one young woman and injuring 19 others.
Prior to being ambushed by the press in her garage, Bloom appeared to have been unaware that her son was part of a mob waving swastikas or that he was facing charges of murder. In the video interview, now gone viral, Bloom is initially bemused by the reporters' unexpected presence and remains subdued as they explain, eventually responding with a disjointed account of her most recent interactions with her son.
Bloom had just helped Fields relocate to his own apartment, she knew he was going interstate for a rally – "I thought it had something to do with Trump" – but she generally stayed out of his political views, and she was minding his cat while he was gone.
It's uncomfortable viewing, a woman grasping at mundanities, staving off the incomprehensible horror being delivered to her by vultures. She appears shocked but confused, unable to process much while being loomed over by opportunists intent on monetising her impending grief.
But, in a world where women's grief is required to be performative, and mothers are held accountable for the actions of their grown sons, Bloom's failure to offer up a pound of her own flesh was damning.
While some on social media condemned the journalists for their lack of tact, general consensus seemed to be that Bloom's unemotional response indicated complicity with the blatant racism and violence displayed by her son.
"Samantha Bloom, Jason Alex Field's mother, is held responsible for the hatred her son exhibited today," reads one tweet, "Own up to the monster you created."
"No emotion or concern," reads another. "I suspected she shared his views … now I'm convinced she does."
While the parallel may not be obvious to US media consumers, for me, the assumptions strongly evoked the Australian media circus surrounding Lindy Chamberlain, whose stoic countenance after her baby was killed by a dingo earned her the condemnation of a nation. Like Bloom, Chamberlain failed to follow the script of the wailing woman, grieving privately and thus neglecting to feed her audience the vicarious experience they craved from her.
Denied access to Chamberlain's private emotions, the mob exacted compensation, swinging to the view that a woman who didn't grieve openly must surely be guilty of infanticide. Chamberlain was convicted of her daughter's murder, but exonerated by new evidence after serving three years of a life sentence.
Bloom is not accused of a crime, nor at risk of being formally charged with one, but as the mother of an alleged domestic terrorist, she is expected to perform grief for both her son and his victims, simultaneously taking responsibility for his actions and disavowing him entirely.
I imagine it was a lot to contend with when caught by surprise by reporters in her garage.
By Monday though, the narrative around Samantha Bloom changed. Investigators had dug deeper and discovered police transcripts of Bloom reporting domestic violence incidents. According to transcripts, Fields had, on different occasions, threatened his mother with a 12-inch knife, spat on her, struck her across the head and locked her in a bathroom after she told him to stop playing video games.
Like many a domestic terrorist before him, Fields appears to have practised his violence on a woman close to him before adopting a radicalised philosophy (in this case Nazism) designed to flatter and appeal to his sense of superiority and entitlement.
It was also made apparent (eventually) that Bloom is a wheelchair user, a detail artfully framed out of the initial interviews with a bit of creative camera work, but important as it speaks to her physical vulnerability in the context of her son's violence, and puts a disturbing new spin on Field's reported fondness for Nazi rhetoric (people with disabilities did not fare well under the German regime).
In editing out Bloom's disability, reporters also erased the emotional response that may have appeased her critics. In footage taken from a different angle, we see Bloom's expression crumple as she wheels herself away. She is visibly gutted by this turn of events.
Bloom, perhaps, was never the best target for peoples' pain and anger in the aftermath of the Charlottesville violence, because ultimately, blaming parents only shifts the responsibility. Whatever Bloom's strengths or shortcomings, it is the actions of her son, and the systemic structures supporting the growth of white nationalism and supremacy that really need attention.
How do we (and by "we" I mean white western cultures because let's take some responsibility) prop up this sense of entitlement? How do we encourage and excuse the violence? How can we educate and de-escalate?
We need leadership to take a strong stance against systemic racism and commit to introducing programs and policy that actively combat it.
One thing we can start doing right now is take domestic violence against women and the online radicalisation of young white men more seriously as red flags.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/opinion/our-disturbing-impulse-to-blame-the-charlottesville-drivers-mother-for-his-actions-20170816-gxxoxp.html