White Terrorism and Privilege
I know. I know. Not all white men, right?
I write this as a white, cishet, man. I write this from a place of privilege. And I write this from a place of disgust.
This. Cannot. Continue.
On August 3, 2019, a 20-year-old white man entered an El Paso, Texas Walmart and killed 20 people, wounding 26 more. He was apprehended “without incident.” Rest assured, a black man would not have been arrested “without incident.” I’m almost equally sure he never would have done it.
Today is still the day of the shooting. We don’t have a final death toll (it’s too damned high). We don’t know the shooter’s motives (there is no justifiable motive). But what we do know is that it’s part of a pattern.
Mass shootings. Several metrics by which they are counted. These metrics require 3 or 4+ victims, with at least one casualty. They also require that the shootings occur in a limited location, and within a limited time frame. (One metric excludes gang-related violence.) However, I would suggest that a casualty not be a requirement. If, say, 20 people are shot and none dies, that still qualifies as a mass shooting.
Given these characteristics (four or more shot, in a particular time and location, regardless of casualties), then we have seen 248 mass shootings in the US. August 3rd is the 215th day of the calendar year, and we’ve endured 248 mass shootings. That’s 1.15 per day, every day of the year. In those shootings, 979 people have been wounded, and 246 have been killed. That’s 1225 individuals killed or wounded in 215 days, 5.69 per day, every day.
It’s true that numbers can be complicated. Which kinds of murders are we talking about? Those who track these numbers make distinctions. Just straight up murders. Familial and domestic murders. And then mass murders, as I’ve defined above. It’s true that there is no “typical” murderer. However, if we focus solely on mass shootings like the one in El Paso, then the shooter is almost always a cis, white, man. Why? Why are they so angry? Why are they killing their fellow citizens?
They fear the changes taking place in society. Change is hard, and some cannot make the shift. They fear the loss of masculinity as they once understood it. The standards for masculinity are changing, and the standards for femininity are changing. Even the binary model of masculinity and femininity is changing. And they often face economic adversity. The economy has not been great for them. And while the economy has long favored the top ten percent, and while that means that vast swaths of the populace have not done well economically, it is something of a change for white men. They, at the very least, were at the top of that limited pile of money.
And, as early evidence in the El Paso case suggests, these disaffected white men have found a beacon in Donald Trump. He tells them that he wants to take them back to a time when American was great — by which he means, and by which they understand him to mean, when white men got their “fair” share. He tells them that it is the foreigner, the stranger, the Other who stands in their way. Nevermind that the truth is that it is the Donald Trumps (and all his cronies that he favors in his policies) who stand in their way, they cannot effectively take on the oligarchs. They can take on the migrants and the children of immigrants who stand in line at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.
We must not condone this. We must not become numb to this. We must demand concrete action on guns, on violence, on hate speech. We must counter the narrative. I understand that nearly every society creates an Other against which it defines itself. Trump is actively trying to shape that narrative. He is creating the myth that it is the immigrant who is our Other, who threatens the very fabric of US society and values. He is wrong. It is Trump and his cronies who threaten our values. It is Trump and the oligarchs who profit from this chaos. And we must craft the narrative so that we understand that it is the hatemongers who are a threat. White men are the greatest threat. This is the story we must tell. Over and over.
I know I’m not entirely alone in this view. Yesterday (3 August 2019), George P. Bush tweeted that we must recognize the El Paso shooting as an active of “white terrorism.” Bush writes — pointedly invoking the language of the 1919 Supreme Court case, Schenck vs. United States — that white terrorism “is a real and present danger that we must all denounce and defeat.” FBI Director Christopher Wray recently testified that the majority of domestic terror cases are now white supremacist related.
We have this regrettable tendency in the US to call upon the leaders of marginalized and minority groups to speak out against acts of violence. If an African American commits a crime, then the leaders of the African-American community are asked to denounce that person and that act. If a Muslim commits a crime, then the leaders of the Muslim community are asked to condemn the person and the act. This same pattern does not happen when the perpetrator is white. And that is the perfect illustration of white privilege. When a white man commits a mass shooting, it does not reflect on me in the same way that a mass shooting would reflect on every Muslim.
We as white citizens, and especially we as white men, must denounce these acts in the strongest terms. We must shape the narrative. We must use whatever privilege we have to stop this insanity.
N.B.: I started writing this shortly after the news of the El Paso shooting broke. By the time I was able to finish, there had been another mass shooting. This time in my home state of Ohio.
This. Cannot. Continue.
Ritch Calvin is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at SUNY Stony Brook. He is the author of a book on feminist science fiction and editor of a collection of essays on Gilmore Girls.
