The horror in Omaha

I'll pray for them, Charity. Thanks.

"Not to be grossly cynical, but what would the reaction be if this kid was a Muslim from Pakistan? We would be calling it a terrorist attack, and we would be attempting to do something about it. Instead, we talk about him being thrown out of his parents house and being dumped by his girlfriend."

This is an interesting point. No doubt if this were a man appearing to be Arab there would be calls to round up all persons of Arab appearance in the Council Bluffs/Omaha region and take them to Gitmo. When I heard of the attack yesterday I began searching for news reports on the incident. It wasn't until late in the evening that I found one that even gave a description of the killer.

I strongly suspect that, had the killer been non-white, we would have had no problem determining the race or national origin of the killer. We would have been bombarded with headlines 'Black youth attacks shoppers" or "Muslim terrorist loose in Omaha mall."

It's interesting that when the perpetrator of an atrocity looks like us, we seem to react in a more rational/thoughtful manner than when the perpetrator looks like "them" (whoever "them" happen to be).

ds0490,

A few years ago a University of North Carolina student who was a Muslim ran his Jeep Cherokee into a crowd of students. I don't recall anyone calling for Muslims to be rounded up then. In fact if anything the media goes out of its way to avoid reporting on the race of the perpetraitor of crimes if they are a minority. Was any mention made of the fact the Sean Taylor's killer was black? On a less serious note, the judge who sued the Korean drycleaners for losing his pants was black, yet that was never reported in the media despite the long history of emnity between black and Koreans in urban areas.