By Teka Lark (October 4, 2017)
The problem with the conversation in regards to what is and what is not terrorism is that, in the US, people don’t get that our definition of terrorism has little to do with political ideology and has 100% to do with not being a white person born in the US.
Maybe in other parts of the world terrorist means something, but in the US–a country that murdered Native American men women and children because they wanted their land, and enslaved Africans for hundreds of years, and then spent another 100 years murdering them for sport–terrorism is a code word.
It is a code word like ghetto, urban, thug, slut…the term terrorist isn’t about terrorism in the US, it is about race.
The four little girls blown up in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama? The people behind that, are they terrorists? No, that is different? How? Not different, just the victims are not white and the perpetrators were white.
This “let us wait and see what this guy really is” assumes that the label of terrorism is reasonable and objective.
It is not.
OK, you still doubt my assertion. You are going to continue to be reasonable in the era of Trump.
You need political motivation. OK, his political motivation was capitalism. Yes, capitalism; is that motivation enough for you?
Oh, but that is different.
The god of money, power and privilege isn’t political, even though my ancestors were brought here and enslaved because of it, and a whole way of life was murdered and attempted to be erased in the US because of it.
But you still say this is different.
Think about why you think this is different.
If he were brown, Muslim, born not in US, and was called a terrorist would you still think I was being unreasonable.
I live in a place that will put you in jail for a parking ticket and weed, and I am unreasonable, because I call a white American with a college degree who injured 506 people and murdered 56 with an automatic rifle a terrorist?
