Liberal writer issues warning...Let's hope the Boston marathon bomber is a white American

LIBERAL WRITER ISSUES WARNING OVER BOSTON TERRORIST’S ETHNICITY: ‘LET’S HOPE THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBER IS A WHITE AMERICAN’ Apr. 17, 2013 9:08am Billy Hallowell

At least one writer over at Salon, a progressive media outlet, is hoping that whoever is behind the Boston Marathon bombing “is a white American.” Naturally, this very public proclamation, captured in an article entitled, “Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American,” is nabbing attention, particularly because of the writer’s claims about radical Islamic and Caucasian assailants.

Writer David Sirota’s main premise, it seems, is captured just under the article’s headline, where he writes that a double standard exists when dealing with terrorism and other related crimes. Whites, he believes, “are dealt with as lone wolves,” while Islamists are reviled as “existential threats” in the midst of murderous crimes.

At the center of Sirota’s argument is the notion of “white male privilege” — a phenomenon he laments (at least when it comes to solving and dealing with terrorism).

Investigators in white jumpsuits work the crime scene on Boylston Street following yesterday’s bomb attack at the Boston Marathon April 16, 2013 in Boston, Massachusetts. Security is tight in the City of Boston following yesterday’s two bomb explosions near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, that killed three people and wounding hundreds more. Credit: Getty Images In the author’s view, privilege determines how groups are framed, denigrated and how political reactions take form. In recent mass shootings, Sirota writes that white male privilege has protected caucasian male perpetrators from being collectively mistreated in the same way that he contends “a religious or ethnic minority group” that lacks such privilege would be.

However, white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated/targeted for those shootings — even though most come at the hands of white dudes.

Meanwhile, non-white or developing-world terrorism suspects are often reflexively portrayed as representative of larger conspiracies, ideologies and religions that must be dealt with as systemic threats — the kind potentially requiring everything from law enforcement action to military operations to civil liberties legislation to foreign policy shifts. [...]

Because of these undeniable and pervasive double standards, the specific identity of the Boston Marathon bomber (or bombers) is not some minor detail — it will almost certainly dictate what kind of governmental, political and societal response we see in the coming weeks. That means regardless of your particular party affiliation, if you care about everything from stopping war to reducing the defense budget to protecting civil liberties to passing immigration reform, you should hope the bomber was a white domestic terrorist. Why? Because only in that case will privilege work to prevent the Boston attack from potentially undermining progress on those other issues.

According to Sirota, Muslims are responsible for fewer terror plots than non-Muslims, yet the U.S. has waged a war against Islamic terrorism. He argues in his article that privilege has protected domestic, non-Muslim assailants.

When it comes to the terrorist (or terrorists) behind the Boston attack, the writer claims that a “white, anti-government extremist” would mean that the attack would mainly be treated as an isolated incident — and that it would not become a wider policy point of discussion.

To ensure his point was made, Sirota notes, “Put another way, white privilege will work to not only insulate whites from collective blame, but also to insulate the political debate from any fallout from the attack.”

The writer warns that policy decisions concerning withdrawing from Afghanistan, Pentagon budget cuts, civil liberties issues and immigration could be impacted if those responsible are non-white, Islamic or of another minority designation.

“It will probably be much different if the bomber ends up being a Muslim and/or a foreigner from the developing world,” he continues. “As we know from our own history, when those kind of individuals break laws in such a high-profile way, America often cites them as both proof that entire demographic groups must be targeted, and that therefore a more systemic response is warranted.”

Here is the full post from POS Sirota:

As we now move into the official Political Aftermath period of the Boston bombing — the period that will determine the long-term legislative fallout of the atrocity — the dynamics of privilege will undoubtedly influence the nation’s collective reaction to the attacks. That’s because privilege tends to determine: 1) which groups are — and are not — collectively denigrated or targeted for the unlawful actions of individuals; and 2) how big and politically game-changing the overall reaction ends up being.

This has been most obvious in the context of recent mass shootings. In those awful episodes, a religious or ethnic minority group lacking such privilege would likely be collectively slandered and/or targeted with surveillance or profiling (or worse) if some of its individuals comprised most of the mass shooters. However, white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated/targeted for those shootings — even though most come at the hands of white dudes.

Likewise, in the context of terrorist attacks, such privilege means white non-Islamic terrorists are typically portrayed not as representative of whole groups or ideologies, but as “lone wolf” threats to be dealt with as isolated law enforcement matters. Meanwhile, non-white or developing-world terrorism suspects are often reflexively portrayed as representative of larger conspiracies, ideologies and religions that must be dealt with as systemic threats — the kind potentially requiring everything from law enforcement action to military operations to civil liberties legislation to foreign policy shifts.

“White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for your group to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening or threatened with deportation,” writes author Tim Wise. “White privilege is knowing that if this bomber turns out to be white, the United States government will not bomb whatever corn field or mountain town or stale suburb from which said bomber came, just to ensure that others like him or her don’t get any ideas. And if he turns out to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won’t bomb Dublin. And if he’s an Italian-American Catholic we won’t bomb the Vatican.”

To know that’s true is to simply consider how America reacts to different kinds of terrorism.

Though FBI data show fewer terrorist plots involving Muslims than terrorist plots involving non-Muslims, America has mobilized a full-on war effort exclusively against the prospect of Islamic terrorism. Indeed, the moniker “War on Terrorism” has come to specifically mean “War on Islamic Terrorism,” involving everything from new laws like the Patriot Act, to a new torture regime, to new federal agencies like the Transportation Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security, to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to mass surveillance of Muslim communities.

By contrast, even though America has seen a consistent barrage of attacks from domestic non-Islamic terrorists, the privilege and double standards baked into our national security ideologies means those attacks have resulted in no systemic action of the scope marshaled against foreign terrorists. In fact, it has been quite the opposite — according to Darryl Johnson, the senior domestic terrorism analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, the conservative movement backlash to merely reporting the rising threat of such domestic terrorism resulted in DHS seriously curtailing its initiatives against that particular threat. (Irony alert: When it comes specifically to fighting white non-Muslim domestic terrorists, the right seems to now support the very doctrine it criticized Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry for articulating — the doctrine that sees fighting terrorism as primarily “an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement, public-diplomacy effort” and not something more systemic.)

Enter the Boston bombing. Coming at the very moment the U.S. government is planning to withdraw from Afghanistan, considering cuts to the Pentagon budget, discussing civil liberties principles and debating landmark immigration legislation, the attack could easily become the fulcrum of all of those contentious policy debates — that is, depending on the demographic profile of the assailant.

If recent history is any guide, if the bomber ends up being a white anti-government extremist, white privilege will likely mean the attack is portrayed as just an isolated incident — one that has no bearing on any larger policy debates. Put another way, white privilege will work to not only insulate whites from collective blame, but also to insulate the political debate from any fallout from the attack.

It will probably be much different if the bomber ends up being a Muslim and/or a foreigner from the developing world. As we know from our own history, when those kind of individuals break laws in such a high-profile way, America often cites them as both proof that entire demographic groups must be targeted, and that therefore a more systemic response is warranted. At that point, it’s easy to imagine conservatives citing Boston as a reason to block immigration reform defense spending cuts and the Afghan War withdrawal and to further expand surveillance and other encroachments on civil liberties.

If that sounds hard to believe, just look at yesterday’s comments by right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham, whose talking points often become Republican Party doctrine. Though authorities haven’t even identified a suspect in the Boston attack, she (like other conservatives) seems to already assume the assailant is foreign, and is consequently citing the attack as rationale to slam the immigration reform bill.

The same Laura Ingraham, of course, was one of the leading voices criticizing the Department of Homeland Security for daring to even report on right-wing domestic terrorism. In that sense, she perfectly embodies the double standard that, more than anything, will determine the long-term political impact of the Boston bombing.

His reasoning, brilliantly stated, is that since whites enjoy “white privilege,” we are essentially immune to being “collectively slandered,” which is what happens to other groups when one of their own goes on a murderous killing spree. While a white man will be seen as a “lone wolf,” non-whites get subjected en masse to “surveillance or profiling (or worse);” they are “targeted;” they are “denigrated,” and “dealt with as systemic threats.”

And this is why he wanted the killers to be white, so that larger groups, white and otherwise, won’t face a hateful, multi-pronged backlash in the media, or from law enforcement, or on the street from the general public. For everyone knows that, now that the killers have turned out to be Chechen Muslims, there will be an all-out invasion of Chechnya. Chechens in the US will be subjected, collectively, to mass slander; half-witted xenophobes from Kentuckee mountain hovels will poke fun at Chechen accents through the gaps in their teeth; hateful, hillbilly white girls will no longer submit to charming, sincere, Chechen advances.
Recent history proves that Sirota is right in expecting these kinds of reactions. I remember how tragic it was to see the public backlash against blacks nationwide only two months ago. Remember when Christopher Dorner went on that terroristic anti-white killing spree? Gangs of whites doing revenge flashmobs in every downtown mall; the government herding-up of blacks into camps “for their own protection;” hockey teams storming theatres showing Django Unchained, smashing projectors with their sticks, chanting “Down with Harvey Weinstein!” I guess in their narrow-minded bigotry they assumed, without even seeing the film, that it overtly celebrated the murder of whites at the hands of a self-righteous black guy. Anyway, I’m with Sirota in assuming that if Dorner had been white, none of this would have happened.

The Dorner affair made me think it was 2002 all over again. Remember when the DC sniper, whom everyone assumed was white, turned out to be a black guy and his black-kid sidekick? Remember how our African American pals nationwide, by the millions, were rounded up and deported to Liberia?And then there was that 2009 “Underwear Bomber,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. His tighty whities didn’t explode killing scores of innocent holiday travelers, but still there was that horrible anti-black knee-jerk reaction among white racists and xenophobes nationally. Remember that? So much “collective slandering,” so much “denigration:” Protesters surrounding the Nigerian Embassy, showering it in soiled underwear and toilet paper; Glenn Beck sending out researchers to find Nigerian products to boycott. These seemed almost measured, appropriate responses until NATO launched those bombing raids on Lagos. We whites are so out of our minds with hate. But if Abdulmutallab had been white, the event probably wouldn’t even have made the news.

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