This is a piece I wrote on September 15, 2016. Bear that in mind if it feels dated. Also bear in mind how pathetic it is that America is spiraling downward fast enough for 4 months to even feel "dated"...
The San Bernardino shooting. The Dallas police massacre. The cold, calculated executions of gay men at Orlando's Pulse nightclub...
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All three of those horrific killing sprees were committed by American citizens against other American citizens. While that fact in and of itself isn't as shocking as it should be, the common denominator that sets these specific mass murderers apart from the rest is rather noteworthy. To put a fine if blunt point on it, none of the assailants were white males.
In the United States, mass murders and serial killings have almost exclusively been carried out by members of the most privileged group of Americans amongst us. In terms of domestic terrorists alone, white males kill innocent victims at a rate double that of all Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American men combined. For the first time in... well, EVER... the United States is experiencing a new wave of domestic terrorism perpetrated by males from marginalized groups. Yet few if any are asking why.
Muslims have been a part of the American fabric since the nation's inception. Black men can claim a longer history in this country than most whites can. Access to guns has always been a fundamental right in this here. In other words, very little has changed in the U.S.
This observation is especially marked when we narrow the scope of change to the past thirty or so odd years. Other than the legalization of same-sex marriage, the advent of the internet and, much more recently, an ever-increasing reliance on social media, time has essentially stood still. So what has changed for the marginalized male and, as we saw in San Bernardino, the marginalized female?
Racism and Otherism have always been more American than a freshly baked apple pie served on a flag during a baseball game. Minorities have had to deal with the reality of discrimination, stereotyping, and victim-blaming since before our country's birth. The only difference between then and now is this is the first time in our checkered history where oppressed peoples have been subjected by their oppressors to an every moment of every day assault on their character, dignity, and basic human value. This continuous bombardment of white volatility mixed with white denial and blame-shifting is as traumatizing as it is radicalizing.
The above screenshots were taken from just one conservative site, on one day, four years ago. Since that time, online hatred and defamation against minorities has become frighteningly commonplace. Here's a quick recap of what is now the new norm:
- Innumerable videos of police officers killing unarmed black men and children are available to view online. Instead of feeling mortified and demanding justice for the deceased, large numbers of white people dismiss, trivialize, and even blame the victims for their own murders. This behavior hit an all-time low with the death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Cleveland child who was executed by a police officer while playing with a toy gun. Again, a large number of whites blamed the child for his own death, despite the fact his killer had a history of emotional instability and disciplinary reprimands. Imagine the collective rage if a 12-year-old white child named Tommy Rice had been the victim? There wouldn't have been an excuse good enough to appease white America.
- After a series of fatal incidents involving unarmed black people being murdered by police officers, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter surfaced on social media. Rather than agreeing and stating that black lives do indeed matter, large numbers of whites responded with #BlueLivesMatter, #WhiteLivesMatter, #AllLivesMatter, and so on. In other words, many whites trivialized and deflected a very real trauma in the black community by making the story about them.
- Hate speech against Muslims has been on the rise for a few years now. This hostile outpouring of vengeance and rage has spilled over into the offline world, culminating in a climate where American Muslims are now being routinely attacked in vicious hate crimes. A few days ago, on the 15th anniversary of 9/11, a Muslim woman was set on fire in the middle of New York City; last week two young Muslim mothers were attacked in the New York City borough of Brooklyn by a rabid Trump supporter who punched one of the women in the face, tried to forcibly remove her hijab, and assaulted her 15-month-old child by attempting to knock over his baby stroller.
- Georgetown University has found a marked correlation between the rise of Donald Trump in this election season and hate crimes toward American Muslims. (An excellent article with summations can be found here.) Update: The Southern Poverty Law Center has found the same correlation since Trump's electoral college "win".
Those four bullet points barely scratch the surface of the new Wild West free-for-all that has become the internet and social media. There is also the wall Trump wants to build along the Mexican border, Trump's campaign promise to end birthright citizenship (aimed at people of color), and on the list goes. Compound these major issues with a seemingly endless supply of demeaning articles, posts, and commentary dehumanizing minorities and what you are left with is a recipe for disaster. Or in this case, a recipe for domestic terrorism.
Anonymity of the internet does not negate the lasting ramifications of the words we write or our culpability in having written them. Choosing to overlook volatile comments rather than calling people out for issuing them makes you equally responsible for any tragedy that results from them. WORDS MATTER. The commenters I've highlighted here might not have technically pulled the triggers in San Bernardino, Dallas, and Orlando, but at the end of the day they are as ethically and morally responsible for all of those American deaths as the gunmen themselves.
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