The Chicago Incident Analysis

I actually had an entirely different blog post in mind, but after the Chicago incident involving the assault on a special needs man it was difficult to write about anything else. Writing about anything else felt like a personal waste of time as this incident is truly what is on my heart and brain.

I am assuming you have seen the news about the four assailants who physically and emotionally assaulted a young man with special needs. If you want you can read the story here.

I'd rather not plunge into the details of the incident and I will assume you know what happened. I would rather emphasize my personal thoughts about it.

As an advocate for Apraxia Awareness, I often witness parents and children discuss bullies. Even on Facebook group pages, it is common to see a parent post about some
Our society judges based on looks and intellect alone. We live in a society that constantly seeks to label and classify people as if their objects: Type A, Type B, and Type C. We even seek to label children under categories of "Honors" and "Special-Education." This constant labeling, classification, and objectification is heart-wrenching because we know that our value as human beings is beyond these labels. Sadly though, these assailants only saw their victim as a label. As a thing that they could harm. They did not see him as a fellow man. They saw him as "special" or even a "retard," which I guarantee you they called him that given their colorful language used in the video. These individuals preyed on him and treated him as the hollow label they saw him as and nothing more.

Back to the infamous question of why anyone would do this? There is no correct answer. However, I cannot help but to feel that these perpetrators felt superior to their victim given his circumstances. How could they feel superior to him? Because they, along with others, felt that being 'different' made their victim inferior to