The Nation — October 30, 2017

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12 The Nation. October 30, 2017


H


ere we are again: one man, a cache
of assault weapons, innocent vic-
tims. This time it happened in Las
Vegas, where a 64-year-old gam-
bler broke through the windows
of his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay
Bay hotel and, from that vantage point, fired into
the crowd at an outdoor country- music concert,
killing 58 people and injuring nearly 500 others.
When I heard about the massacre on the radio,
I knew, even in the midst of my horror, that the
suspect was a white man, because the reporter
referred to him as a “gunman,” not as
a “terrorist.” The difference has far-
reaching consequences for how the
country responds to mass shootings,
which have claimed hundreds of lives
and are most often perpetrated by
white men, many of whom espouse
extremist right-wing ideologies.
Consider how our media talk
about mass shootings and terrorist
attacks. Stephen Paddock, the mur-
derer in Las Vegas, was called a “lone wolf,” a
“gunman,” and even a “sniper,” while Omar Ma-
teen, who killed 49 people in Orlando, Florida,
in June 2016, was almost immediately dubbed a
“terrorist.” But did the men and women who fran-
tically sought cover from the hail of bullets at the
Route 91 Harvest Music Festival feel less terror
than those who were trapped in the Pulse night-
club? Do families who lost loved ones in Las Vegas
grieve any less than those who did in Orlando?
Of course, it can be argued that terrorism is
not just about inducing fear and inflicting vio-
lence, but doing these things in the service of a
greater political cause. Mateen was said to have
pledged allegiance to ISIS on a 911 call during the
shooting, whereas Paddock’s motives remain, as
of this writing, unknown. “Right now,” said Sher-
iff Joe Lombardo of Clark County, Nevada, “we
believe it’s a sole actor, [a] lone-wolf-type actor.”
Notice that the emphasis on the solitary nature
of the act encourages us to think of it as unavoid-
able: We are supposed to accept that mass shoot-
ings can happen because no one can predict when
an armed man will “snap” and go on a shooting
spree. Bill O’Reilly, the former Fox News person-
ality, made this argument in a blog post the day
after the shooting. “This is the price of freedom,”

he wrote. “Violent nuts are allowed to roam free
until they do damage, no matter how threatening
they are.”
Yet when it comes to terrorism, we are repeat-
edly told that every effort will be made to keep us
safe, whatever the cost to our rule of law or sense
of morality. Days after the terrorist attack by Syed
Farook and Tashfeen Malik in San Bernardino,
California, for example, Donald Trump, then still
a presidential candidate, called for “a complete
and total shutdown of Muslims entering the Unit-
ed States.” Last summer, after Mateen opened fire
in a gay nightclub, Trump gloated
that he “appreciated the congrats for
being right on Islamic terrorism.”
At the same time, Trump remains
conspicuously silent when the at-
tacker is a white man. When Jeremy
Joseph Christian killed two people
in Portland, Oregon, who had ob-
jected to his anti- Muslim rant on a
Metropolitan Area Express light-rail
car, Trump didn’t suggest banning
white men from trains. Instead, he spent the
weekend tweeting about the Russia investiga-
tion and leaks from the
White House. Like-
wise, the neo-Nazis
and white nationalists
who marched through
Charlottesville, Vir-
ginia, this past sum-
mer and killed a young
counterprotester did
not attract Trump’s
ire. There were “some
very fine people on
both sides,” he said.
And all Trump could
manage about the
massacre in Las Vegas, reportedly the deadliest
mass shooting in modern American history, was
that Paddock was a “sick” and “demented” man.
It’s tempting to dismiss these reactions as dis-
tinctly Trumpian, but I fear that Trump is merely
saying out loud what remains politely unspoken in
the culture. The United States doesn’t talk about
mass shootings in the same way that it talks about
terrorist attacks. One type of violence is viewed as
unavoidable, the other as preventable. One requires

We are supposed
to accept that
mass shootings
can happen
because no one
can predict when
an armed man
will snap.

The Color of Terrorism


Why are white male shooters described as “lone wolves”?


FOOD INSECURITY


Hunger in


America


T


he number of US house-
holds suffering from
food insecurity has de-
creased slowly since 2011, when
nearly 15 percent struggled to
provide “adequate, nutritious
food,” according to a recent
report by the US Department
of Agriculture. Last year, that
number fell to about 12 percent—
roughly 15.6 million people, and
still a percentage point higher
than pre-recession levels.
Black and Latino households
are more likely to go hungry
in the United States. In 2016,
black households experienced
an uptick in food insecurity,
while during the same period
the rate decreased for white
households. Northeastern states
have made modest gains, but
food insecurity in nonmetro
and rural areas across the coun-
try jumped by more than a
percentage point in 2016.
One of the easiest ways to help
would be to provide people with
better access to existing govern-
ment assistance. According to an
analysis by Fast Company, four
out of 10 food-insecure house-
holds haven’t received aid in the
form of food stamps or other
initiatives like the National School
Lunch Program. There have
been several attempts to tackle
this problem, including Fed40,
an app to deliver free meal kits
to food- insecure families. But
such immediate solutions also
need to be met with long-term
action by the US government
to make it easier for individu-
als to obtain a healthy meal.
—Miguel Salazar


Laila Lalami


BETWEEN


THELINES


LEFT: USDA; TOP RIGHT: ANDY FRIEDMAN
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