In the 2020 Christmas season, a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb in downtown Nashville, Tennessee on Christmas morning. The bomber injured eight people and severely damaged around 40 buildings, including an AT&T transmission building. The attacker gave warnings with a female computerized voice that exclaimed that the vehicle would explode. The man was known to make bombs and people had reported the attacker’s abilities to the police. Police explained that they could not find any bomb-making equipment in the attacker’s home in 2019.
As sources continue to come out on the attacker, the explanations towards why he did the crimes are slowly leaking out. Some claim he was mentally ill, and others allude to his belief in lizard people or aliens. While there is no connection to White Supremacist groups, it doesn’t help that the media is refusing to call this attack a suicide bombing. On top of that most individuals are reporting that they are just now finding out about this attack through Twitter or Instagram rather than on news outlets. It is important to understand that by not calling this attack what it is, a suicide bombing, we are continuing the narrative that suicide bombing equates to Muslims.
News outlets are giving the attacker a human identity beyond that of just a “crazed attacker”. While Muslims who do just as terrible of crimes are always linked to just being crazy individuals rather than a human being who had mental issues. Let’s be honest here both types of killers are not good, but what happens is the white man who bombed a downtown on a Christian holiday is framed as an innocent lone wolf. While a Muslim or non-white man who is acting out his own violence on his own record is considered the representative for billions of people. That is the issue. No one is saying that we can’t figure out the why of the killing. That is fine, but if you’re going to treat white killers as humans then you need to give the same respect to non-whites.
I want to talk about another issue with this story. The lack of coverage. It actually surprised me many people did not hear of this attack, yet at the same time, I probably should not be that surprised at all. The media often under-reports attacks and tensions by white men in the media. While over-reporting crimes that are similar by non-whites and other minorities. BBC was just caught framing a meth issue targeting Black folk when statics in the same article showed that white people were doing more meth than any demographic. Over-reporting means that media will hyper-focus on a particular story and reproduce many articles related to the “said story” or they advertise “said story” more than any other. This means that there are reports of white crimes, they just aren’t dispersed widely for anyone to find them unless they are searching for it or stumbling across it.
I doubt many of you who are reading this know about the white supremacist plot to bomb President Obama in 2008. This group, like most white supremacist and Nazi lovers, were not silent about their beliefs. I found about this story by watching a tv show on women killers. Thankfully the wife of one of the terrorist, who claims she didn’t know about the bomb, killed her husband because he abused her and was trying to molest their daughter. The woman could not leave the situation and no one offered help, as she lived in a community that basically supported the white supremacist gang. Thanks to her the attack never happened.
Other cases are presented in the book Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo. Oluo presents the case of the white fundamentalist Mormon family called the Bundy family. These men kept fighting federal law, trespassed, vandalized, avoided tax, you name it. While the government did try to give them a slap on the wrist and had standoffs with them in 2015-2016, the Bundy family got off relatively free. I did not know about this case. If a Native family did the exact same crimes as these white men, they would have been jailed right away or shot. In 2018 after being freed, the Bundys gave anti-government speeches and Trump pardon these white men.
It is important to note the key differences between white supremacists vs. everyone else when it comes to protesting and media coverage: 1.)They are not given as much coverage; 2.)They are not treated the same in media and by politicians; c.) They are generally ignored. While it might seem positive that these crazy white supremacists aren’t given coverage, the truth is that most Americans both white and none become confused about the rising power of these hate groups. By ignoring the issue we are letting the wound fester, while at the same time by not treating these groups the same as other hate groups and treating none radical groups as hate groups we are increasing violence. It is easy to say only “blank do blank, just look at the news and politicians” when white crimes and actions aren’t reported. By not covering these issues and not treating them the same as similar crimes we allow for the spread of white hatred. This is because it tells these individuals that what they are doing is correct because no one is punishing them when they break the law.
At the same time by treating protests like those in 2020 as “bad” or “radical” instead of highlighting the reason behind them, we further fuel the flames of ignorance. There was violence in 2020, but ignoring the positive changes that people wanted to be done and the reasons behind the protest doesn’t actually fix the issues that caused people to protest. Treating these groups as terrorists, but not treating white groups that do the exact same thing and who go to these BLM protest and attack protesters further tells these radical white groups that they are in the right.
Just as I am writing this White Supremacist, Trump Supporters, and everyone in-between stormed the United States Capitol on 1/6/2021. President Trump tweeted before the storming that all his supporters should storm the capital to protest him losing the presidential election. These individuals were barely fought off by the police who were caught opening gates to these crazed individuals. After storming the building, these whites took selfies with police officers and stole federal property. What this day showed the rest of America is that white individuals can invade federal property without even a slap on the wrist. While people of color or whites who fight against oppressive laws will be gunned down, beaten, jailed, or what have you for doing the exact same thing (often for simply existing).
Trump was finally banned on Facebook and Twitter as well as silenced the President. Honestly, it has been too late, the damage has started since his election. So what can we do? Demand that news sources change their voices. Treat crimes that are the same as the same. Support news, journalists, magazines, and other media that do report information as correctly as they can. Make people accountable for spreading soft media control. When a crazy white man suicide bombs, demand that these articles use the correct wording. We have reached the point in society that we can’t just sit down and ignore these things. It might be easier to watch Netflix, YouTube, or Tiktok but ignoring what is going around us will continue to allow societies ill to spread. No one is saying you can’t take breaks, you should take breaks but for many people they can’t.