Netflix’s new Jeffrey Dahmer movie is revisiting stereotypes of serial killers as white men. The FBI however informs us that, “Contrary to popular belief, serial killers span all racial groups. There are white, African-American, Hispanic, and Asian serial killers. The racial diversification of serial killers generally mirrors that of the overall U.S. population.” We’ve come a long way, baby.
It’s been a long road toward equity and diversity in serial killing. Radford University’s serial killer database reveals that in 1900, a less diverse time, 72.9% of serial killers were white, while only 25% were black and none were Asian or Hispanic. By 1970, progressive forces were making inroads in our society so that only 60% of serial killers were white and 33% were black. Hispanic serial killers, long overlooked, became a serious presence in 1950 when they hit the murder charts at 2.8% and in a massive win for civil rights made it all the way up to 11% in 2000.
By 2010, 30% of serial killers were white, 59% were black, and Hispanic and Asian serial killers were making inroads in a tribute to the nation’s newfound diversity.
Progress for female serial killers has proven to be more elusive. Female serial killers hit an all-time high in the early 20th century with women accounting for a third of serial killers. Sadly the proliferation of serial killings increasingly made murder a a male-dominated field. While in 1900, there were 36 male serial killers to 13 female serial killers, by 2010 there were 110 male serial killers to 7 female serial killers. Even while feminism was moving forward, the number of female serial killers had actually declined in the face of aggressive male competition.
There is no question that serial killers of all races and ages have made enormous strides. The typical stereotype of a white male serial killer in his twenties represents only 7% of the serial killers between 1990 and 2016. That progress shows how far America has come since 1900.
Serial killer diversity has increased so that, as the FBI puts it, killers mirror the diversity of America, nonetheless the representation of serial killers both real and fictional lags behind.
While Jeffrey Dahmer, a white male, has been the subject of numerous movies, like Dahmer, Raising Jeffrey Dahmer and My Friend Dahmer, Carl Eugene Watts, a black serial killer nicknamed the Sunday Morning Slasher, remains largely unknown. Charles Ng, a Kim Jong-Un lookalike, who ran a sex dungeon where numerous women were kidnapped, tortured and killed, has no movies to his name. That shows us how far we have yet to go to fulfill our ideals.
“When you’re a white man, even an incomprehensible, horrific act will not only afford you the benefit of the doubt and an endless amount of excuses but maybe even glorify you to the point of someone making a multimillion-dollar, two-hour-long movie dedicated to unpacking your neuroses,” Teen Vogue complains.
Hollywood isn’t interested in a full representation of serial killing diversity because it’s racist.
White men like Dahmer can kill 17 people and become famous while Watts, who may have totaled 100 victims, can’t get a Hollywood agent to return his phone calls. And not just because he died in Jackson, Michigan in 2007. (Although that probably doesn’t help.)
Ángel Maturino Reséndiz, the Railroad Killer, who offed almost as many as Dahmer, and who had been deported four times to Mexico, is obscure despite the opportunity that his case presents for showing the contribution that illegal aliens continue to make to this country.
“Beneath the veneer of order, purity and casual disassociation there is a raging libido all the more terrible because whites are so emotionally, physically, viscerally out of touch with it,” Richard Dyer, formerly of Marxism Today, writes. “Serial killing must have something to do with whiteness.”
The over-representation of white serial killers makes sense from this perspective as a demonstration of white evil. A white school shooter is bound to spend a year on the evening news while gang members racking up 5 times his total over one month in Chicago are overlooked. To permit the representation of non-white male serial killers threatens the entire cultural and political hegemony of the progressive cause which is based on combatting whiteness. If anyone can be evil, that raises the possibility that the Left can also be evil.
The cultural response to Netflix’s Dahmer movie has been on the role of the cannibalistic serial killer as a stand-in for all white people.
“I’m Done Watching True Crime Romanticizing White People,” reacted Veronica Wells-Puoane at The Daily Beast. “It’s a choice that aligns with my decade-long practice of limiting my interactions with white people as much as possible.”
“Black queer Milwaukeeans on Netflix’s Jeffrey Dahmer series: ‘How dare you?'” an NBC News headline screams.
Invoking the white serial killer is a pretext for such racist tantrums. That is why they command such a disproportionate amount of attention. As symbols and metaphors, Dahmer, Bundy, and Gacy, occasion sweeping racial responses that would be unacceptable if they were directed at O.J. Simpson or an MS-13 gang. The ideal celebrity serial killer is not only a white male, but ordinary, outwardly polite, and well behaved. He is there to suggest that underneath western civilization, its manners and order, is an endless horror that we choose to be unaware of.
It is the same racist argument as the one put forward by Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nehisi Coates and countless critical race theory campaigners, but wrapped in the chewiness of true crime.
In the real world, few crimes are committed by career serial killers. Most are carried out by random street criminals. And these crimes are concentrated in diverse urban areas, away from the pleasant suburban streets where the media’s favorite serial killers, real or fictional, roam.
Those are the uncomfortable truths that true crime is designed to divert us from. Fictional mysteries set in quaint English villages where the killer is the elderly granny you least suspect are a magician’s sleight of hand diverting audiences from the acid attacks and stabbings, not to mention the grooming gangs, of London and Manchester. American true crime is just as determined to miss the forest for the trees, but it damningly uses the tree to create the illusion of a forest. A school shooter or a basement serial killer becomes a national obsession and a metaphor for the country’s real problems which always involve white evil, not crime statistics.
So far 2,865 people have been shot in Chicago this year. 559 of them are dead. These are the numbers you would expect from a war. In the face of such hard truths, racial escapism to a world where the thing to worry about is that the nice white boy next door is really a gay cannibal is a pleasant interlude. A little diversity among the ranks of serial killers would interrupt this fantasy. It would also raise difficult questions about the entire progressive program of blaming the nation’s varied ills on whiteness, white people and white men. Just call it the equity of evil.
A couple centuries ago, when psychology was in its infancy (I guess), an eminent British doctor said there was about 1 lunatic per 7000 people in Britain, while there were about 1 per 1000 in the Navy. They were trying to figure out why there were more in the Navy. But I would guess there are more lunatics per 1000 people nowadays. Why?
That is what the Democrats are unleashing on us, not just street criminals roaming the streets, but lunatics roaming unchecked.
Interesting example of the British Navy in the 19th century as a barometer (shitty pun, I know,) for a comparison of lunatics to the general population. Obviously something about sea life in ports around the world with a steady paycheck was attractive to serial killers, but really, how many loons are all around us everyday? I see lots, and they aren’t always noticeable. Many of them disguise their pathologies well. I can’t always spot them, that’s for sure.
One interesting thing was that the doctors and such blamed it on rum, and tried to cut back the rum ration. This was when the British had access to vast quantities of cheap rum from the colonies. I wonder if there were as many lunatics when the sailors only had access to beer, or maybe some wine.
Charles Ng and his buddy Leonard Lake definitely need a movie, they were twisted. Especially Ng.
I lived a few miles from where that all occurred and would go past their “Yard Sale’ table when I went to the transfer station in Wilseyville..
I’m ex-Navy and former Pirate (merc-work), but Ng was a guy I did not ever turn my back on. Ever.
I read about them a long time ago, pretty horrific.
This is because the left way back in the sixties portrayed mental institutions as jails that were abusive to patients. Hollywood jumped on the bandwagon with “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and this started a movement to empty the mental institutions with the lie that the patients were just fine but were being jailed for being a bit crazy. Now we have complete lunatics roaming the streets. The reason there is a higher percentage of mentally ill people is today DRUGS which, according to a psychiatrist friend of mine, can bring on bipolar didorder and schizophrenia.
Samuel Little was a black serial killer who strangled 93 – 93 – women over a 40 year span, was finally caught, got life in prison (how compassionate!), and died there a few years back. As a macabre epilog, he drew dozens of his victims – from memory – during his interrogations. They were all checked against morgue photos and found to be very accurate. Looks like we had MORE serial killer diversity and EQUITY long before we knew it! I feel better for it …
Most likely a person with serious mentall issues was a lot more likely to be recognized the close quarters of a ship. The rate of lunatics in the general population was probably not much lower than that of the navy.
I know all of you will go CRAZY when I say this, but I believe Dahmer became a repentant born-again Christian when he was in jail. However, he should have gotten the death penalty, his crimes were so heinous.
Song: Jesus loves the little children, all the children in the world, red and yellow, black or white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.
It doesn’t matter what color or sex mass murderers are. They are all bat-shit crazy. Bat-shit crazy.
Psychopaths never change. They are born that way. They can easily fool everybody though. Manipulating others to hide their true selves is what they are very good at.
Angel Jacob, you are right. People who suffer from personality disorders like Dahmer do not change.
And I would have no quarrel with your assertion if the second birth were effected by human effort. But the second birth (regeneration) is not accomplished through flesh and blood or the will of man, but through the will of God, resulting in a new creation, a new life with new desires. These things are impossible with us, but not with God.
https://biblehub.com/john/1-13.htm
Dahmer was not a psychopath, although he was diagnosed with various personality disorders. There’s no evidence that he tried to fool anyone after his arrest. On the contrary, he fully confessed his crimes — even going so far as to divulge crimes that otherwise never would have been uncovered, including confessing to one murder he doesn’t even remember committing — and cooperated completely with authorities. He was relieved when he was captured and never attempted to evade punishment for his crimes. At the time of his sentencing he specifically asked the judge to give him the maximum punishment allowable under the law. He admitted towards the end of his life that he still felt stirrings of compulsion to kill but was grateful that he was in prison and no longer able to act on those impulses. Even after his conversion to Christianity he insisted that he should never be released from prison, so it’s pretty clear that his conversion was not some sort of ploy to trick anyone.
Most psychos cannot hide their lunacy but the ones who can are insidious, that’s for sure. And you’re right that they can’t change their nature. Many people can but not them.
That’s correct, he did convert to Christianity in prison. Only G-d knows if it was a genuine conversion. Whenever I’m tempted to dismiss his conversion and arrogantly pronounce a judgment on his soul, I’m reminded of a certain lawyer from Tarsus named Saul who participated in the torture and murder of numerous Christians. That particular mass murderer also converted to Christianity, changed his name to Paul and went on to become one of the greatest religious figures in history.
Paul did not mass murder. His role before regeneration was more like a modern policeman. He sought out and arrested Jewish converts to Christianity.
Paul approved of their deaths. He was a zealous Pharisee, probably a member of the Sanhedrin, who saw apostasy in terms of Deuteronomy 13.
I think you’re engaging in a little apologism and minimization there. If anyone today were involved in hunting down, planning, enabling and carrying out genocide, he/she would be found guilty of murder in the first degree, whether he/she committed the actual killing or not. Saul of Tarsus rounded up numerous Christians and turned them over to the killing mob, then stood and watched while they were executed. That’s a genocidal mass murderer by any objective standard. The alternative would be to argue that those who killed the Christians were unworthy of redemption, yet Saul could be redeemed because he ordered the killings but didn’t actually throw the stones. That, to me, flies in the face of reason.
This makes the message of Christianity — that even someone with such heinous crimes on his head could be reformed and redeemed — all that much more powerful. And it gives me hope for not just Jeffrey Dahmer’s soul but my own.
Moses, the friend of God, was a murderer. David, a man after God’s own heart, was a murderer. Saul, who became the apostle Paul, admitted his guilt in approving of and partaking in the murder of Christians. This noble apostle wrote a substantial portion of the New Testament. Christian history is replete with men and women who committed all the sins you can imagine and more.
Redemption belongs to all who believe in the Son of God. It does not matter who you are or what you have done.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
There is no sin that you (or any man) could commit placing you beyond the reach of the salvation of God in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And no one is worthy of redemption. If there were, then the cross would not have been necessary and salvation would be within our own power. “Grace” means a favor that is not earned or deserved by us. That is why the Apostle Paul wrote:
Ephesians 2:8 For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
Having no access to real flesh and blood he opted for Holy Communion.
That’s not it at all, though I assume you weren’t serious. Prof. Robert Eisenman wrote a lot about Paul, which I won’t go into, for fear of offending anyone.
I read his book “James the Brother of Jesus”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Eisenman
For fear of offending? What’s the point of having freedom of speech if you’re afraid of offending? Self-censorship is the ultimate goal of cancel culture (ex-communication) and censorship.
Inoffensive words need no protection they’re always welcomed it’s the words that offend that tyrants want silenced.
As usual you miss the point entirely.. Read Prof. Eisenman’s book and you might learn something about Paul which would help you recover from your religious upbringing.
Or you could just listen to his lectures online, at youtube for example. Here’s one at random:
I wonder why you don’t fear offending me but you do fear offending the religious conservatives here? Your selective self-censorship is noted.
Everyone has their own individual path to God, so the teaching I follow is not to criticize someone’s religion if it is bringing them closer to God.
I wasn’t trying to offend you, but trying to give you some good information about Paul from the best historian on that topic that I know of.
You didn’t offend me. You don’t have that power. My reactions and emotions are under my control not yours. Moreover, I believe the purpose of a comment board at a website like FPM is to discuss opposing and controversial ideas.
If a person finds having his convictions, religion, or philosophy, questioned, doubted, or even ridiculed, offensive and emotionally upsetting, then maybe participating on a comment board isn’t for that person.
Or he succumbed to Randian self worship.
That’s a good one.
The victims of serial killers are a very small percentage of all crime victims. It makes no sense to focus on the small portion of the victims to fuel the anti-white hate and racism.
The full crime statistics does not work in favor of non-white criminals. So the anti-white racists try to hide the facts and the truth when it comes to that.
It doesn’t matter what race the criminals are, they all belong in prison, so normal people can be safe.
Not all criminals belong locked away. many deserve execution.
No one has mentioned that the “only 25% of serial killers” who were black in 1900 already meant they were over-represented, at twice their percentage of the population, usually given at around 13%
Astute observation Ms. Taggart.
Were blacks 13% of the American population in 1900? According to Wikipedia they were 11.6% in 1900.
Even today they are about 13.5-15%, but commit over half the violent crime in the USA. Of course the issue of gaining the label “serial killer*”” requires having A) enough victims B) enough victims with a virtually identical M.O. C) a defined hunting ground.
Urban settings many times do not generate a victim profile that magnifies attention to a single perpetrator. How could any Metro PD determine that a single person was killing dope dealers unless he put a porky pig mask on the victims?
Netflix failed miserably with this series. It upset just about all of it’s customers.
The leftist elites hated it because it was all about a white guy.
And normal thinking people hated it because it portrayed ONLY his black homosexual victims, not his white homosexual victims, they were ignored as it turned into a white racist policemen were the problem, in underserved communities.
He was allowed to continue his perversion because the police didn’t want to get into a fight with the queer community.
“People aren’t meant to live in dreams. After a while they turn into nightmares”
One footnote to this excellent article: Carl Eugene Watts’s victims were overwhelmingly white women. That’s an interesting detail to ponder while watching Netflix’s ham-fisted uberwoke Dahmer series, which grossly distorts several historical facts of the Dahmer case to create a false racial narrative.
You’d be surprised (or maybe you wouldn’t be) at how many people spout the lie that most or all serial killers are white.
There are certainly white serial killers, and they deserve to be excoriated like all violent criminals.
No pity for them.
But the news has recently featured plenty of stories of non-white serial killers. Their crimes are reported but then quickly forgotten. The media is almost completely uninterested in them as they are uninterested in the daily slaughter of blacks by other blacks that occurs on a daily basis in cities across America.
It’s just another ploy to blame Evil Whitey for everything.
Racial crime percentages cannot be properly understood without comparing these to the percentage share of population held by each ethnic group.
Blacks punch way above their percentage share of population. Hispanics also punch above their weight, but not as significantly as blacks. Whites punch below their share, Asians punch much below theirs. And these percentages hold true all over the earth in those blessed, racially diverse populations.
The above link is a few years old, but the percentages have remain stable over time.
The new FBI crime surveys are less complete in 2021 than previous years. Almost half of the police jurisdictions are failing to report their surveys. New York, Los Angeles and Phoenix are among them and no doubt blue states jurisdictions lead in this failure.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/fbi-releases-2021-crime-data-but-it-lacks-information-from-major-police-agencies/ar-AA12DhaN
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/10/08/the-problem-with-the-fbi-s-missing-crime-data
Diversity is our strength. We must continue to celebrate its contributions.
Great video, thanks.
Since Hispanics are not a race but an ethnic group it would be interesting to see a statistical breakdown of crime by Hispanics according to race or national origin. I doubt if Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, etc., have a similar crime profile.
Just as black West Indians and black Africans in America do not have the same rate of crime as African-Americans.
From what I’ve read, even in the African-American ghetto most African-Americans are not committing violent crime. The violent crime is committed by a small percentage of repeat offenders and career criminals.
There are *plenty* of black serial killers. Complete undercount. Trust me on this. I had one as a cellmate in Federal prison. Actually a pretty personable guy, but no question: he was a serial killer. At least a dozen bodies on him (not polite to ask, just obvious.) He admitted it, and reading his pre-sentencing report was a basic dive into profiling (killed cats as kid, foster care, etc.)
Here’s why he doesn’t make the lists: *GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT.* My cellmate was still wealthy after 11 years in (houses, cars, cash, etc) because he was gainfully employed in Baltimore in the drug trade. If you’re thinking The Wire you aren’t too far off. If anything it’s *more* professional than depicted there.
Need I elaborate? Though I rather doubt many prosper like…. “T”…. most blacks with serial proclivities manage to get hired. Perversity notwithstanding, there’s a need for them.
This probably happens with white crime as well, but there just aren’t as many violent motorcycle gangs, etc as inner-city drug entrepreneurs.
Thank you Daniel Greenfield. I always look for and read your articles; very insightful and relevant .
The Current Crime Wave Is Unlike Any Ever Experienced In America
By Vince Coyner
This past week New Orleans reclaimed the title of America’s deadliest city after seeing murders jump 141% over the last couple of years. In New Orleans, the murder rate is a staggering 52 per 100,000 people. That compares to the national average of 6.9, the highest it’s been in a quarter century, and the 50 per 100,000 in Venezuela, the most dangerous country in the world.
We know that the left realm is not going to allow films, articles, or any msm to show the truth about anything that goes against the narrative. They won’t even tell you how millions of ill Americans are being denied legal pain medication so they will have to buy from the cartels or suffer to death.
Didn’t just read an article that goes against the “left narrative”? Who told you that books or films that contradict that narrative are not allowed? Go to any online bookseller and you’ll find all the right-wing propaganda your heart desires.
Speaking of propaganda, violent crime in the US today is MUCH, MUCH, MUCH lower than it was when Ronald Reagan was president. The statistics are overwhelmingly clear on this. Yes, violent crime and murders have gone up during the pandemic. Yes, this is bad and we as a society should work to solve our very real problems. But to claim that crime now is worse than ever is an easily debunkable right-wing talking point.
The crime rate under Reagan was the legacy of Jimmy Carter… crime rates don’t fall the day a new administration takes office, it takes years to correct the policies inflicted by the idiocy of liberalism.
Moreover, the Mariel boatlift (allowed by Carter) dumped 1,000’s of violent criminals into the USA.
In many major cities violent crime is certainly worse than ever. I think you’ll find that the highest homicide rates are in blue cities. In any case the folks who squawk about defunding the police and make martyrs out the likes of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin obviously bear most of the blame for that situation.
Note the number of black serial killers in 1900 was more than twice the percentage of blacks in the population… and after 100 years (2000), blacks are now 4x as likely to produce a serial killer as any other racial/ethnic group.
You’ll never see that statistic in the mainstream media.
It’s ironic that the writer for the daily Beast does not realize that “limiting your interactions” with ppl because of their race is a defining characteristic of racism.
African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans … But when was the last time you heard any talking heads say European Americans rather than white Americans and I have also noticed that they capitalize the word Black while leaving white non capitalized.
Tell me again who the majority are in America and which Race and Gender created the modern world we all live in today.
Wait till thousands of trans realize their lives are ruined and blame society.