We have seen some disgraceful reporting of the Boston Marathon bombing the past few days, but this headline at Salon Tuesday could be the worst.
Let’s Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber Is a White American
Last month he participated in a CNN panel that compared supporters of traditional marriage to segregationists and slave owners.
During last year's summer Olympics, he said he had "pangs of discomfort" watching Americans cheer team USA.
Now, roughly 24 hours after our nation was once again hit with terrorism, Sirota wrote:
[W]hite 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.”
What Sirota misses is that there are indeed Islamic terrorist groups - in particular al Qaeda - that have expressly declared war on America.
Maybe he could name some white America organizations that have done the same.
So what is Sirota's real reason for wanting the bomber to be a white American?
He fears that if it turns out to be an Islamic terrorist, conservatives will use it "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."
That's quite a reason to hope the bomber is a white American. Why didn't Sirota just pray that he or she isn't an Islamic terrorist? Wouldn't a black or Asian non-Islamic domestic terrorist fit the part as well?
Not surprisingly, Sirota chose not to address this.
