If Islamic State Had Burned Down Four Churches, It Would Have Been Headline News
Seven Southern black churches burned in the past week, and at least four -- possibly six -- were victims of arson.
This post originally ran on Juan Cole’s website.
Seven African-American churches have burned down in the past week and at least four of these southern Black churches were victims of deliberate arson, and possibly six were.
This news is being reported tentatively and in the passive mood. The churches burned or were burned. But that arson directed at an African-American church in the South after the Roof murders is likely the work of white supremacists is only hinted at. The ambiguity of thunderstorms is typically brought in, quoting local authorities. But there are lots of thunderstorms all the time in the South and churches have lightning rods. Why would a church that had stood for decades suddenly succumb to a single storm?
Shouldn’t the headline be “Suspected White supremacists burn down at least four African-American churches” ? Shouldn’t there be an agent, a doer, involved?
Compare how the press handled Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) attacks on Christians and churches. It was front page news! And the active voice was used, even though these events happened thousands of miles away amidst a fog of war and there were no Western eyewitnesses.
Further evidence that “terrorism” is “raced” in the United States, as something that dark-skinned people do but as a category improperly applied to white people.
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Since May, four main houses in Tyree Guyton's internationally known Heidelberg Project have been leveled by arson fires. In many ways, the showdown between the artist and the arsonist says more about Detroit than does the city's recent bankruptcy filing.
One inmate's reported death wish led to the immolation of more than 300 people at a Honduran prison after the apparent instigator set fire to his mattress on Wednesday in the town of Comayagua, where some 356 others were still missing after the blaze, according to The Associated Press.
It's been over a week since the latest and biggest fire to scorch large parts of the Greater Los Angeles region began, and according to U.S. Forest Service officials it's now known that the blaze was caused by deliberate human intervention -- otherwise known as arson.
From the L Times: "In what appears to be the latest symptom of the nation's mortgage meltdown and credit crisis, insurers, law enforcement officials and state agencies nationwide report a jump in home and automobile fires in the last year believed to have been set by owners unable to pay their debts".
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