Outside of local media in North Carolina and a handful of national media outlets reporting the Associated Press’ account, this story has gone woefully under-reported. I only learned about it, weeks after the fact, when a friend asked why the media — and President Donald Trump, who typically tweets about what he sees as a scary black, Latino, and immigrant criminals — hadn’t said more about the “Asheville bomber.”
White man planted a bomb in Asheville airport last week. Had he been any other color, we would all know about him! https://theintercept.com/2017/10/11/terrorist-donald-trump-airport-bomber-estes-asheville/ …
The Airport Bomber From Last Week You Never Heard About
The man was “preparing to fight a war on U.S. soil,” but was busted by cops — to little fanfare.
theintercept.com
I suspect there’s a reason: Estes is a white man. Shaun King, a columnist at The Intercept, nailed it:
The story didn’t go viral and Trump didn’t tweet about it because the bomb was not placed by an immigrant, or a Muslim, or a Mexican. It was placed there by a good ol’ white man, Michael Christopher Estes. Unlike the Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, whose motive is still hard to discern, Estes wanted to be very clear that his ultimate goal was to accelerate a war on American soil.
To be fair, no one other than King has labeled Estes a terrorist, but the criminal complaint against him describes the activities of someone who sought to incite fear and sow civil unrest through violent means.
Words and images in the media matter. It’s easy to assume how the visage of a dark-skinned person would have play to the stereotypes of a populace primed to be fearful of some “other” American or immigrant. As we well know, Trump has a quick-trigger finger to name-call and demonize terrorists — often well before the facts of an investigation are known — when it suits his political passions, such as in the London tube attacks last month.
But when Michael Christopher Estes, a white man who admits to wanting to start a war against the nation, is the suspect in a horrific crime, it behooves our media to get the full and unvarnished story out before the public.
Of course, as most of us intuitively know, it would have done so if the suspect had been black, Latino, or Muslim.
Article Appeared @https://thinkprogress.org/north-carolina-airport-bomber-2edbc03a1a8b/