Page 32 - ARUBA TODAY

A32 FEATURE
Friday 6 OctOber 2017
Are white shooters called ‘lone wolves,’ by default?

By ERRIN HAINES WHACK former President Barack ville, Virginia, after a pro-
Associated Press Obama for not immediate- test against the removal of
When Stephen Craig Pad- ly referring to shooter Omar a statue of Confederate
dock - a white American Mateen’s acts as “radical Gen. Robert E. Lee turned
- was identified as the gun- Islamic terrorism.” violent and a driver fatally
man who rained bullets on Though Mateen professed struck an anti-protester. In-
multitudes at a Las Vegas support for the Islamic stead, the president said
concert, he was quickly State group, his specific “many sides” were respon-
characterized as a “lone motives - and the contribu- sible.
wolf.” tion of any personality dis- Wes Bellamy, vice-mayor
Had he been of another order he might have had of Charlottesville, said the
race or ethnicity, would - have never been deter- tone has been undoubt-
he have been branded a mined. edly different on Las Ve-
terrorist instead, or would Obama was unsparing in gas. The solution for the
aspersions have been cast describing the killings of double standard, he said,
on his minority group? nine worshippers in a black is more honesty.
The question has been church in Charleston, South “What transpired in Las Ve-
raised again and again in This undated photo provided by Eric Paddock shows his brother, Carolina, in 2015 by Dylann gas and what happened
recent days, as critics sug- Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock. Associated Press Roof as “an act of terror” in Charlottesville was do-
gested the conversation and “an act of hate.” mestic terrorism,” said Bel-
around our nation’s trag- workplace violence - No- wrong?” he said. “Then all Trump was criticized in Au- lamy. “It has no color. We
edies is often framed in di- len was embittered by his you have done is maybe gust for declining to more have to address it and call
visive, racial code words. suspension from his work at assuaged people’s anxiety strongly condemn white it what it is, no matter who
If whites are blamed, they a Oklahoma food process- for the moment.” supremacists in Charlottes- does it.”q
say, it is as individuals; for ing plant. Authorities have not yet
minorities, it is suggested The lone wolf label has determined a motive in the
that their crimes are part of been frequently ascribed Las Vegas shootings, the
a larger narrative. to mass killers, like Aurora, deadliest in modern U.S.
“For whites, it’s ‘just some- Colorado, movie theater history, which left 58 victims
thing that happened,’” shooter James Holmes, a dead and more than 500
said Texas Southern Univer- white man who killed 12 injured after a country mu-
sity professor Sharlette Kel- people in 2012. The term sic festival on Sunday.
lum-Gilbert. “When it’s of is a convenient one for a President Donald Trump
another race, ‘this is how society eager to ease its condemned the shootings
they are,’ and there are anxiety after such a horrific Monday as “an act of pure
calls for law and order.” event, said Mark Hamm, evil,” but stopped short
Shaun King raised the same a professor of criminology of declaring the incident
point Tuesday in a column at Indiana State Univer- domestic terrorism. On
for The Intercept entitled sity and author of “Age of Tuesday, Trump referred
“The White Privilege of the Lone Wolf Terrorism.” to Paddock as “sick” and
‘Lone Wolf’ Shooter.” “It’s easy to leap to that “demented” - suggesting
“White men who resort to metaphor,” Hamm said. that mental health prob- In this Monday, April 10, 2017, file photo, Dylann Roof enters the
mass violence are consis- “Terrorism is such a loaded lems were a possible expla- court room at the Charleston County Judicial Center to enter his
tently characterized pri- term. There is an ethnic nation for the tragedy. guilty plea on murder charges in Charleston, S.C.
marily as isolated ‘lone piece to that.” Trump and his administra- Associated Press
wolves’ - in no way con- Whether federal authorities tion have been criticized
nected to one another,” or leaders decline to de- as using racially tinged lan-
King wrote. “For centuries, fine these acts, the public’s guage. Last year, amid the
when an act of violence definition is a broader one, investigation into the Pulse
has been committed by Hamm said. nightclub shooting in Orlan-
an African-American, rac- “What if the classification is do, Florida, Trump criticized
ist tropes follow - and even-
tually, the criminalization
and dehumanization of an
entire ethnic group.”
Last year, when Micah
Xavier Johnson shot at po-
lice officers in Dallas, Texas,
killing five and injuring nine
others, Black Lives Matter
was blamed - though he
had no known link to the
movement.
In 2014, when Alton No-
len was arrested in the
decapitation of one co-
worker and the stabbing
of another, some were
quick to blame Alton No-
len’s “radicalization” as a In this July 23, 2012, file photo, James Holmes, who was convict-
ed of killing 12 moviegoers and wounding 70 more in a shoot-
recent convert to Islam. ing spree in a crowded theatre in 2012, sits in Arapahoe County
They could have catego- District Court in Centennial, Colo.
rized the crime instead as Associated Press