Indeed, it's not just the Kansas and DC shootings. Richard Poplawski, a right-wing extremist and white guy, allegedly gunned down three police officers in Pittsburgh in April, in part because he feared the non-existent "Obama gun ban." Jim David Adkisson, a right-wing extremist and white guy, allegedly opened fire in a Unitarian church in Tennessee last year, in part because of his "hatred of the liberal movement."

      -Steve Benen

When it comes to irrevocable inclusion in the “American” family, white skin  counts.  An anti-abortion terrorist walks into a medical clinic and shoots a doctor dead.  His political agenda is clear—to terrorize and silence the pro-choice movement and doctors who tend to women’s medical needs.  Immediately, a media debate grows on the procedure he performed—tacitly suggesting that the doctor might have deserved to be murdered.  His murderer was white.  

Randall Terry of Operation Rescue, a “legitimate” voice for the anti-abortion movement, friend and contributor to countless politicians, schedules a press coference to “make the case that ‘Tiller's death and office closing can help propel pro-life movement, derail Sotomayor and overturn Roe.’  A muslim organization suggesting this level of support for a terrorist would have its bank accounts impounded and its members on a FBI watch list.  But Terry is a white American.  He is allowed to advocate and benefit from murder and terror as a political tools.  He remains respectable member of the American political community.

Two sets of slow, mentally deficient black men are goaded by an FBI agent into fantasizing terror attacks—one set in Miami (some finally convicted after two mistrials) and one in New York—and they are marched before TV cameras like Osama bin Ladens and promoted as the biggest catch since Abu Zubaydah.  These men killed no one and harmed nothing. They were black.  There was no debate on the merits of their grievances. 

An old neo-Nazi walks into the Holocaust Museum and starts shooting.  He kills a guard.  His political agenda is clear—to terrorize and silence minority voices.  However, he is not called a “terrorist.”  In fact, Good Morning America hosted another neo-Nazi to explain the murderer’s motivations.  

Imagine having another Arab terrorist on the program to explain shoe bomber Richard Reid’s motivations.  The Nazi is white.  “Terrorists” are brown.  As white, these murderers are considered by the media and those in power to be intrinsic to the American fabric.  They are American to the core—American in a special way that only white skin can make you.  It means that no matter how heinous their crimes, they remain one of “us.”  They cannot be placed outside the human family via the word “terrorist.”  

The majoritiy of Americans were perfectly thrilled to kill tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis for no good reason—other than they were brown and Muslim and we hate them.  We are perfectly happy to continue dropping bombs on innocent Afghans even though doing so only teaches them to hate us while undermining our strategic goals in the area.  We have no problem treating brown people—particularly Muslims—as subhuman and disposable.  We have no trouble dubbing them “Terrorists.”

But there’s more to it than just color.  We are happy to scream “environmental terrorism.”  We still talk of 60s era “terrorists” (remember William Ayers).  These folks are ethnically white as well, so what else is going on? 

It’s simple:  the environmental bombers and William Ayers attacked traditional symbols of white male authority—corporations… the military.  Our recent murderers are seen as protecting those traditional symbols of authority: traditional values—a woman’s defenselessness against the whims of a man’s penis and the primacy and white male privilege.  Thus, let’s look at the word “white” in its broadest sense—as evoking traditional American power structures.

When the DHS released a report warning of an upsurge of extreme right terror, the wingers grew hysterical.  How dare anyone suggest that their ilk could be terrorists.  When they kill, it’s for AMERICA.  It’s an act of patriotism, not terrorism; they’re protecting what’s fundamentally American and so their murders should be treated with respect.

The media plays along.  In Slate, the regularly ridiculous yet continually published William Saletan wrote: “Is it wrong to defend the life of an unborn child as you would defend the life of a born child? Because that's the question this murder poses.” 

He is justifying murder.  He equates something that sits inside someone else’s body with something that lives independently.  Whether that thing “could” live independently is pure obfuscation.  A cell can live in a petrie dish.   The whole point is the omission and dehumanization of the person carrying the fetus—the woman.  The whole debate centers on the debasement of living, breathing women.  Thus, we can openly debate whether murder in furtherance of such debasement is justified.

Women, Muslims, Afro-Americans, Jews.  Murder them and you are justified.  Why?  Well, perhaps your rights as a white man have been trod upon.  Perhaps you’re only reacting to societal changes.  After all, you have a right to be murderously mad.  Hannity, Beck, O’Reilly and Malkin all say so.   In any case, that you are protecting something fundamentally American will be sensed deep in the media marrow.   Those in power will pity you and call you “disturbed.”  But they will not call you terrorist.  They will not revile you, extraordinarily render you, torture you or throw you in a dungeon. 

After all, you’re white, with all the good things that implies.