Acute Loss and the Social Construction of Blame

Abstract

Using interview and observation data from white and African-American parents of murdered children, this article explores a primary social process accompanying acute loss: the social construction of blame. Findings reveal that race and class are primary forces that shape not only the experience of loss, but also attributions of cause, designations of blame, and the construction of post-mortem identities. While poor Black informants encountered avoidance strategies on the part of authorities (e.g., police) when their child was murdered, whites and upper middle-class Blacks received emotional support. This differential treatment by authorities led to either legitimate or disenfranchised grief, both of which were addressed by the strategy of “sanctification,” a form of emotion work.

Parental Responsibility and Respondent Anger, Sympathy, and Willingness to Help Following Child Death

“…Thus, onlookers to the loss of a child are left with little linguistic-conceptual guidance for how to conceive of this event. The construction of blame provides a means to mitigate ambiguity (Martin, 2005). People have a strong need to believe in a just world, and when this world is violated in negative ways it creates dissonance that needs to be resolved (Festinger, 1957).…”

Moral Truth and Compounded Trauma

“…For families' repair work to be effective, then, moral and causal narratives pertaining to the homicide require broader social acknowledgment (cf. Martin, 2005;Rock, 1998a)-most saliently through the highly ceremonial work of the criminal justice system. Narrative repair work and its confirmation are also characteristic features of more general social reactions to other unjust, violent, and unexpected events, for example, terrorist attacks (see Smelser, 2007).…”

“…This process is, of course, integral to important ceremonial occasions such as funerals and criminal trials, whose elaborate rituals and dramaturgical conventions work to confirm moral boundaries, socially recognize wrongs, working to refute some versions of reality and morality, and to validate others (Cohen, 2001;Durkheim, 1893Durkheim, /1933Garfinkel, 1956;Garland, 1991;Rock, 1993;Thiel, 2015). Secondary victims of serious crimes such as homicide, therefore, look to the criminal justice system and its courts to acknowledge the innocence of the deceased, the family's status as secondary victims of an immoral aberration, and their ensuing right to be recognized and treated as innocent parties (Martin, 2005;Rock, 1998aRock, , 2014.…”

Identity Management of the Dead: Contests in the Construction of Murdered Children

“…Control of the premises for social (as opposed to legal) evidence allows for a virtual identity to be constructed through the claims‐making activities of parents, police, school, and other authorities. Yet both the identity‐claims that families make and the premises on which they are based are commonly situated in interaction with police who, even in the absence of evidence, may blame both the family and the victim for the homicide (Martin 2005). The kinds of identity work that families may do in light of such a situation is both “oppositional” (Schwalbe and Mason‐Schrock 1996:141) and what I would call emancipatory identity work insofar as it seeks not simply to subvert the dominant group's identity codes but to transcend them.…”

“…For families in this study, the management of grief is part of everyday life (Goodrum 2008). Because police, community, friends, and distal kin may assign varying degrees of responsibility for the homicide to the victim or the victim's family, the loss may not be acknowledged, validated, or mourned—or only partially so (Martin 2005). In such a context, families experience “disenfranchised grief” (Doka 1989:4).…”