FASCINATING DISCUSSIONS IN LIGHT OF FRENCH CARTOONIST SHOOTING

MUSLIM SHOOTER=ENTIRE RELIGION GUILTY
BLACK SHOOTER=ENTIRE RACE GUILTY
WHITE SHOOTER=MENTALLY DISABLED LONE WOLF (@sallykohn)

"If a terrorist attack took place right here in the U.S., wouldn't it be a national story?

Terrorism may be defined as "the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes," but if you asked most people, the term conjures one image: brown people with beards and bombs. Nothing has made that profoundly racist misunderstanding clearer than the news coverage of two violent attacks that happened within roughly 24 hours.

On Tuesday morning, the NAACP offices in Colorado Springs, Colorado, came under attack when someone who is believed be a balding white man in his 40s dropped an explosive device that went off a few feet from the building. And on Wednesday morning, news broke of a horrifying mass shooting at satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in France that left 12 dead and several wounded.

Both acts were motivated by radical ideology, but only one of them is being covered by the 24-hour news cycle. What gives?

According to Ebony senior digital editor Jamilah Lemieux, it's because we rush to label attacks carried out by non-whites as "terrorism," but when the perpetrator is white, we view those cases as isolated acts of violence."

MORE:   MIC.COM

ALSO OF NOTE:

U.S. right wing extremists more deadly than jihadists

"On Sunday, a man shot and killed a 14-year-old boy and his grandfather at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City and then drove to a nearby Jewish retirement community where he shot and killed a third person. Police arrested a suspect, Frazier Glenn Cross, who shouted "Heil Hitler" after he was taken into custody. 

Cross, who also goes by Frazier Glenn Miller, is a well-known right wing extremist who founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Patriot Party, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Now let's do the thought experiment in which instead of shouting "Heil Hitler" after he was arrested, the suspect had shouted "Allahu Akbar." Only two days before the first anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings, this simple switch of words would surely have greatly increased the extent and type of coverage the incident received."

CNN.COM