So Nazis are posting about Black serial killer Samuel Little and claiming that "all serial killers are white" is an anti-white myth. So it's time for debunking. Yes, it's a myth that all serial killers are white, but it's a myth that only serves white supremacy. (thread) https://twitter.com/BreakingNews/status/1344465317528023040

Any serious sociological study will show that when controlled for other factors, the rates of seral murder are pretty evenly dispersed across ethnicity in the US. Murder is linked strongly to gender however, both in the US and worldwide - men always murder much more than women.

So why is there a perception, both among white people and POC, that serial killers are only white men? The basic reason is that these kinds of murderers get such a high body count because they go for easy targets. Easy targets are 1) close in proximity and 2) will not be missed.

Marginalized women of color, especially survival sex workers, are especially easy targets. And within that group Black women and Native women have been especially targeted. These are also the women whose lives are least valued by our racist society.

So Black serial killers like Little or Anthony Sowell the Cleveland Stranger operated for years under the radar. If they were white and had targeted women of a higher social standing, they would have been caught sooner and more lives would have been saved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Sowell

Here's another example, a Latino serial killer who targeted agricultural laborers. Not women, but similarly not valued by our society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Corona

So the first factor that explains the "all serial killers are white" myth is how our society (doesn't) value victims. People who are poor & marginalized are often blamed for their own deaths or their deaths are regarded as a natural result, a grotesque inevitability.

But there's a second factor that has to do with the killers themselves, which is the media's valorization of the white male serial killer as a kind of darkly attractive intellectual figure.

White serial killers get TV shows and adoring fans. We've built up a bizarre idea that if we empathize with them enough, if we examine the way they think deeply enough, we'll find out something valuable about human nature.

In reality these (almost all) men are really just kind of stupid and violent and impulsive. None of them are evil geniuses. But we've built them up that way.

Both ignoring marginalized victims and valorizing white male killers has led us to this place where it's hard to see reality through so many warping layers. And even people who mean well believe the myth! But if you do, please think deeper and stop pushing it. /end