The Nation — October 30, 2017

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