What If America Treated Racism The Way It Treats Terrorism? The Stories Would Be Told A Whole Lot Differently

By Yvonne Sam
Contributing Columnist

I have often wondered, long and hard, what the argument would sound like, if America was as sensitive to racism, as it was to the country’s collective clutching of pearls about the horrendous acts of terrorism that took place on January 6, 2021.

Accompanying the usual fear and outrage, came calls, from the left and other politicians, to immediately condemn the attacks on the Capitol and on American citizens, and brand the episodes with the infamous “ism” that pigeonholes every one of these happenings, as an act of hate.

Putting the argument to the test does not necessitate the stretching of false equivalencies, or the bending of opinion. As a matter of fact, it may be the laziest piece of mockery ever written, considering all it requires is replacing the word “racism” with “terrorism” ….. and voila! a theoretical reasoning that answers the question, “What if America treated racism like it treated terrorism?”

Perhaps it is time that we look at these obvious acts of terror, with the sober disinterest the rest of America applies to police brutality/police killings and other kinds of violent attacks.

Should we not apply the same discretion to the bombings and mass shootings that we do to the videos of police shooting unarmed Black men?

Whenever Black people connect or associate state violence to prejudice, many from the mainstream culture display a subdued unwillingness to say the word “racism”. Should this tactic not be applied across the board?

Permit me one aspect of pellucidity: it is certainly pitiful when innocent individuals, just trying to reach their homes, become victims of random acts of violence, whether walking through a mall or simply reaching for their license and registration.

We should also be horrified when citizens, who are minding their own business, standing on the corner in New York selling a few loose cigarettes, find themselves on the ground, unable to breathe, because of the actions of a single person with hate in his heart and a history of violence.

When covering crimes involving Blacks or Muslims, a different policy is practiced. All suspects are instantly characterized as terrorists, motivated by evil intent, rather than by external oppression and injustices.

For the greater part of the past 50 years, White supremacist groups were largely demoted to the fringes of American society, where they continued to survive, if not thrive, as a disreputable remembrance of history.

Recently, they found a geopolitical landscape that was supportive of their rhetoric and activities. They are plain and simple terrorists and that is what they should be called.

The atrocious lynchings and terror campaigns that destroyed entire communities, and the many unresolved murders that dominated a certain period in American history, and the years that followed, should be acknowledged as acts of domestic terrorism.

Washington therefore needs to treat White supremacist violence as the transnational threat that it is, plainly put, by defining it as terrorism, and restructuring the government’s counterterrorism agencies to comprehensively counter it as a transnational threat.

Americans are, again, losing their lives to this threat, and the reality of it should define how we respond to it.

It is time that uniformity is introduced in the legal parameters. regarding terrorism. Perhaps, such a move would provide the much-needed answer to the enigma: “what if America treated racism, the way it treats terrorism”.

Aleuta, the struggle continues.