There are no white terrorists
by digby
... because we're good and they're evil, apparently:
Only 41 percent of American adults believe the shooter at Emanuel A.M.E Church in Charleston, S.C. should be charged with terrorism, according to a CNN and ORC International poll.
The shooter, Dylann Roof, killed nine African-American church goers last month in an attack that targeted a community based on their race. Roof’s wrote in his manifesto before committing the crime:
I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.
Despite his motivations, the majority of Americans polled said that the act should not be considered terrorism. Another picture emerges however if the poll is broken down by race, with 55 percent of black Americans believing that Roof’s actions deserve the terrorism label as opposed to just 37 percent of white Americans.
The fact that black Americans were the subject of the attacks and that the attacker was white will have resonated strongly with those respective communities. “People of color felt more affected and victimized by it. To them it was an act of terror which can then be seen as terrorism, where as white people saw it as an act of racial discrimination,” Dr. Priscilla Dass-Brailsford, Chair of the International Psychology program at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology in Washington, D.C. and an adjunct at Georgetown University, told ThinkProgress by phone.
Even the head of the FBI didn't see Charleston as a political act which is why treating "terrorism" as a special crime, the way we do, with all the resources devoted to it, the civil liberties exemptions and longer sentences is such a crock.
Some Senators are questioning this:
A handful of Senate Democrats are pushing for hearings on domestic terrorism following last month’s shooting at an African-American church in Charleston, S.C.
“We urge you to hold hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee on the threat posed by domestic terrorism and homegrown hate groups. In the past, mass violence in our country has been explained away as an act of insanity to be treated as a mental health issue. What we saw in South Carolina is about hate, and it is about evil,” the six senators wrote to Judiciary Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-IA). The group of senators include Patrick Leahy (VT), the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee; Dick Durbin (IL); Richard Blumenthal (CT); Dianne Feinstein (CA); Chris Coons (DE) and Al Franken (MN).
As long as the huge majority of white people in this country cannot even contemplate the idea that white people might be terrorists, I doubt this will go anywhere.
There is another way to deal with this, of course. We could dial back all the terror-mongering and call these events "crimes", whatever the motivations, the way we used to. That would hamper our ability to fearmonger about Muslims coming to kill us all in our beds and make it more difficult to throw the constitution out the window whenever we choose, but it is one solution.
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