Came across this interesting article yesterday. I honestly didn’t know this was a thing until I read it, thought everyone was behind trying to get her released from Russia as a political prisoner. I’m genuinely surprised that some here would use the BS drug charge to justify her detention and slavery in Putin’s Russia.
https://www.insider.com/brittney-griner ... tic-2022-8
Dani Gilbert, an expert on hostage taking and recovery and a Rosenwald Fellow in US Foreign Policy and International Security at Dartmouth College's John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, told Insider, before Griner's release, that her research suggests that "how someone came to be in need of assistance affects whether or not the public thinks that person should receive it."
This phenomenon, she said, is called the "deservingness heuristic."
Gilbert used poverty as an example for her explanation. People who believe that poor people are simply unlucky are the ones who are willing to support programs that provide assistance. But those who deem poor people lazy are less likely to support those same programs.
Her research, which she conducted along with a colleague at the University of California San Diego, suggests that that same theory applies to the public perception of hostages and wrongfully detained people. Griner was no exception.
"The fact that the American public might be really focused on the alleged drug possession and the outlandish accusation of drug smuggling might make the American public less willing to pay attention to this case," Gilbert said, adding that the public may also be "less supportive of government efforts to bring her home."
She continued, "That's the kind of dynamic that might really be in play."
"It's unfortunately quite predictable that Americans respond this way," Gilbert added.
Gilbert further explained that personal characteristics could have had an effect on the way the public regards Griner's situation: Though "gender tends to be less influential in how the American public and how the media care about, sympathize with, pay attention to Americans who are held hostage abroad" than some other factors, "race is a huge deal here."
This concept is aptly called "the missing white woman syndrome," Gilbert said.
"A white girl or a white woman who is taken captive or arrested or something like that elicits tons of sympathy from the American public in a way that women and girls of color do not," she explained. Gilbert believed that the fact that Griner is Black could have been "a huge part of the lack of attention to her case."
"And then there are other demographic characteristics, including the fact that she is openly gay, that she is gender nonconforming, not traditionally feminine — all of these work against public sympathy for someone in her position," Gilbert added.
"What we should really be focused on is the fact that she was wrongfully detained and is sitting in Russian prison in illegitimate arrest," she added. "And that any American in that situation deserves help to come home."