Nasty.
But true. We seem to reserve the word "terrorism" -- at least as it occurs in these United States -- for attacks on white people. Excuse me... white "folks." "Folks" is in vogue these days as a way of indicating that here, in America, we're all really good buddies.
Dylann Roof is not my buddy. Just so we're clear.
A couple of decades ago, Oklahoma City experienced an act of terrorism -- officially -- when McVeigh blew up the Murrah Building. It was the second act of major terrorism that Oklahoma had experienced in the 20th century, but the first occasion has not been recognized as such. The first act of terrorism was, as Jelani Cobb points out, the Tulsa Riots. ...
... in which a white mob, enraged by a spurious allegation that a black teen-ager had attempted to assault a young white woman, was deputized and given carte blanche to attack the city’s prosperous black Greenwood section, resulting in as many as three hundred black fatalities. From one perspective, the Murrah bombing was the worst act of domestic terrorism in our history, but, as the descendants of the Greenwood survivors know, it was likely not even the worst incident in Oklahoma’s history. ...Cobb,NewYorker
The Tulsa Riots took place in 1921. We like to think things have changed for the better. But they really haven't changed, not that much. Cobb goes on to remind us that, of course, Dylann Roof was not alone when he entered that Charleston church.
Not only the word "terrorism" is absent from reports of the attack in the church...
...Another word has remained absent from the discussion of the events in Charleston: Obama. The President is an unnamed but implicit factor in the paranoid assertion—attributed to Roof but certainly not limited to him—that blacks are taking over the country. In January, 2008, Barack Obama won the South Carolina Democratic primary, largely on the strength of African-American votes; a state in the Deep South gave a black candidate a crucial push in his campaign for the White House. The recalcitrant pledges to “take our country back” that began after the Inauguration were simply more genteel expressions of the sentiments that Roof articulated.
The fact that Roof appears to have acted without accomplices will inevitably be taken as solace. He will be dismissed as a deranged loner, connected to nothing broader. This is untrue. Even if he acted by himself, he was not alone. ...Cobb,NewYorker
Terrorism isn't something just foreigners do to us. It's as American as virulent, unapologetic racism.
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The Republican response to the latest act of certifiable terrorism is characteristically blind, deaf, and dumb.
Most of the Republican candidates for President were reluctant to speak of the Charleston massacre in political terms. Prayers were routinely offered, but there has been little talk of change of any kind. There was a general refusal to speak of racism or of gun control, lest the tragedy be “politicized.” Some denied race as a motive altogether. Rick Santorum, for one, insisted that the attack was on “religious liberty,” not on black men and women. ...DavidRemnick,editor,NewYorker
