General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAre the Tsarnaev brothers white?
Whatever their racial status, they seem to resemble young American mass murderers more than al-Qaida members
BY JOAN WALSH
In the wake of David Sirotas hot-button essay last week, Lets Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber Is a White American, conservatives swarmed to trash Sirota and Salon. Im not here to defend or criticize Sirotas piece I get in enough trouble on these issues myself but the storm it provoked was revealing, especially once we learned the identity of the two suspects: Tamarlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, ethnic Chechens who grew up in Russia and came legally to the U.S., who were also Muslim.
Hate mail and punditry targeting Salon and Sirota declared that Sirota was not only morally wrong in hoping the terrorists would turn out to be white but that he was proven spectacularly incorrect, because the Tsarnaev brothers are not white. Sorry David Sirota, looks like Boston Bombing suspects are not white Americans, wrote the folks at Newsbusters. Is David Sirota crying uncontrollably because the Boston bombers werent whites?? one conservative emailed Salon. There was a lot of other email in the same tedious vein.
But are we sure the Tsarnaevs arent white? They are quite literally Caucasian, as in from the Caucuses: Rebecca Eisenberg helps with this handy map. And ethnically in this country, we count Americans of Russian descent, as well as Chechens, as white. Dzhokhar was a naturalized American citizen; Tamarlan had applied for citizenship but reportedly didnt get it because of FBI concerns about his possible ties to Islamic radicals.
So why are the Tsarnaev brothers not white, at least to right-wingers? Is it only because theyre Muslim? Muslim immigrants? Or is it because theyre bad, and whiteness must be surrendered when white people are bad?
full column
http://www.salon.com/2013/04/22/are_the_tsarnaev_brothers_white/
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Timothy McVeigh was white. OJ Simpson is black. Adam Lanza was white. John Muhammed and Lee Malvo were black.
So what?
treestar
(82,383 posts)It was not connected to all white people. White people weren't suspect or thought more likely to commit heinous terrorist acts.
Yet when Muslims did it, to the RW, all Muslims because suspect.
Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)He killed his wife and another guy. He knew them. He didn't randomly kill and terrorize like the others in your example.
ProgressiveProfessor
(22,144 posts)That they were somehow crazy or even lone wolves is not making it in the media or online.
Walsh here is protecting Salon and Sirota. Not sure her interests are the truth either.
RobinA
(9,888 posts)I suspect they are lone wolves of a sort, but that story doesn't make it because it ends with these guys - one dead and one badly injured. The sleeper cell narrative makes more interesting reading, sells content for longer, facilitates Justice Department drama, necessitates an ongoing need for law enforcement expenditures and crackdowns, and validates all the surveillence-state measures already taken. In my mind, this entire episode is well into terrorist porn territory.
ProgressiveProfessor
(22,144 posts)Things like:
- where did they get the guns
- how were they funded
- what did the Feds already know
will trickle out over time and feed a thousand conspiracy theories
Smarmie Doofus
(14,498 posts)Whatever you want to call that.... that's what they look like.
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)He probably looked more like Yassar Arafat than someone from the Caucasus region.
CBGLuthier
(12,723 posts)As the article points out they are literally Caucasians.
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)Origin of the term "Caucasian"
According to Leonti Mroveli, the 11th century Georgian chronicler, the word Caucasian is derived from the Vainakh ancestor Kavkas.
"The Vainakhs are the ancient natives of the Caucasus. It is noteworthy, that according to the genealogical table drawn up by Leonti Mroveli, the legendary forefather of the Vainakhs was "Kavkas", hence the name Kavkasians, one of the ethnicons met in the ancient Georgian written sources, signifying the ancestors of the Chechens and Ingush.
As appears from the above, the Vainakhs, at least by name, are presented as the most "Caucasian" people of all the Caucasians (Caucasus - Kavkas - Kavkasians) in the Georgian historical tradition.
byeya
(2,842 posts)on the planet by definition.
(I have to say that I believe races are a social construction because humans are all one species but for the purposes of day to day existence, race matters plenty)
Avalux
(35,015 posts)Kablooie
(18,625 posts)And religious groups seem to be behind a great deal of today's violent fanaticism.
avebury
(10,952 posts)Kablooie
(18,625 posts)It's wonderful day in this neighborhood,
a beautiful day for a neighbor,
would you be ...
WHAT THE F*CK!?
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)If white wasn't meant as born in the southern US to parents born in the southern US who hate public education, are Christian, and will always be gun loving and government hating nuts, I'd be surprised.
This was the issue with all of the speculation. Now we have a definition of the term white that couldn't have been what was implied in order to fit what was said into the reality that played out.
Man, I hope those bombers turn out to be white. The royal white. You know, from like the Caucasus. Any sort of white skin really. Even Russian would be ok.
cherokeeprogressive
(24,853 posts)Anyone who denies that is either lying or willfully ignorant.
It was hoped that ethnicity and religion could be turned into a way to politicize this event.
Both sides played that game.
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)McVeigh and other disaffected crazy, often middle class, white youth, versus al Qaeda terrorists. I suspect a large number of people were thinking along those lines as well.
So that they turned out to be white and disaffected youth was true, but so apparently is the extremist Muslim jihadist true.
Imo, we were all half-right and on the right track with our speculation
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)They're the white that was hoped for by some people. I said southern, Christian, and all that, but you get my point.
Nobody was saying I hope they're white, which could mean from the Caucasus, which is of course where the word Caucasian comes from. What else would I possibly be talking about?
It was white as in American white male, not white from an area south of Russia. To go back and claim on a technicality that white could mean any kind of white is stretching the intended definition of white in order to be correct in some way.
Like you said, the reality seems to have been a bit of both, but not really in how either side probably thought it would turn out.
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)I believe most people who "wanted" him to be white meant "not black or brown." It's that simple.
I did expect home grown, but that was due to the specific holiday, which is very local to Massachusetts and New England. So I was not surprised in the least that they lived in Mass for some years. New England is a very difficult place to "settle in" to, especially Mass. The locals tend to be very insular, many with ancestors who came over on the Mayflower or even earlier. When the economy is good, it is more inclusive workwise. When jobs are tight, non-natives are the first to be shut out. Socially, never inclusive. I've lived in the region for 36 years, so have experienced the social and work isolation first hand. Even the local branch of my family excludes me. I depend on my fur-family and for the most part non-locals (transplants) for a social life.
Beyond that, I don't know how anybody ends up a terrorist, except that I expect they are clear sociopaths. Even had one not been a "misfit," I expect they would have done serious damage, just maybe less physically violent.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Seriously, why do they assume Mohammed Atta actually had religious fanaticism rather than fame-seeking nihilism in his heart?
Or, to put it a different way, when mentally disturbed non-white young men commit mass murder, we project a motive onto it that we have trouble projecting onto the mass murders committed by mentally disturbed white young men.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Brickbat
(19,339 posts)Beacool
(30,247 posts)The Right wingers because the perps are Muslim and Sirota because they are indeed white. Those on the right who do not consider Russians white are plain ignorant.
B2G
(9,766 posts)Those innocent people are just as dead and maimed as they would be if a purple person blew them up.
Their skin color doesn't explain their motives. Their religion does.
FarCenter
(19,429 posts)Of course they are white.
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)KamaAina
(78,249 posts)Um, first they said that Black Hat had not become a person of interest until after his death. That's when we learned he'd been in Russia for six months.
Now this. Which is it? If his ties were known beforehand, why wasn't he stopped?
edit: As to the question of color, I would sublmit that, at this point, Black Hat is blue.
reformist2
(9,841 posts)H2O Man
(73,535 posts)is round, it turns me on." -- John Lennon
treestar
(82,383 posts)The RW has been ranting about Muslims since 911. They are probably surprised to find that some of them are white.
RobinA
(9,888 posts)Many people think for some reason that Middle Easterners aren't "white," and that all Muslims are Middle Eastern. I guess they slept through that whole Bosnia skirmish during Clinton. Anyway, maybe some Followers of Ignorance can learn something - Hey, whitey-from-Europe can be Muslim.
pampango
(24,692 posts)portraying herself as not being a racist. "Hey, these Muslims are white and I hate them."
librechik
(30,674 posts)so anybody else claiming to be white has to look to them for the role model, not vice versa.
B2G
(9,766 posts)It's obvious that when Sirota said 'white', he was referring to white anglo saxon males born here in the US, preferably with conservative leanings. His whole piece was built around 'white privilege'. Is it his assertion that this privilege extends to foreign Islamic immigrants, one of which has only been a citizen for 6 months? Please.
None of those things came to pass, but stretch we must, eh Joan?
It's a sad yet somehow amusing article.
RobinA
(9,888 posts)Sirota meant anything about the bombers being conservative, I just thought he didn't want them to be from the Middle East AGAIN. For the sake of the Middle Easterners in this country if nothing else. I felt the same way and I think plenty of people here on DU did as well. I can't say I know how it feels like, but I definitely feel for the people from the ME living in this country and going about their business with no more thoughts of building a bomb or crashing a plane into a building than I do, but being looked at like they might lob a grenade at any moment and hassled at airports.
Warpy
(111,245 posts)so why the hell wouldn't they be white?
Same thing with Christians across the globe, all colors are represented.
hughee99
(16,113 posts)The idea that the bombers were white allows one to rope them in with militia types, the NRA, RW talk show hosts, the Tea Party, anti-tax, pro-NRA racist groups (in general, people who support our political opponents). Regardless of their skin color though, I think that argument is gone since I don't think you're going to be able to convince anyone that they were acting on direction from Glen Beck, the NRA or the other RW nutbags.
This article seems to me to be an attempt to pretend like speculating they were white was about something other than an attempt to use this to gain political advantage.
Separation
(1,975 posts)No correlation to these three in general, or to events in Boston, but to the general question of race. The last one is Reeva Steenkamp, if she lived here in America, would she be an African American?
President Obama's mother was white, born and raised in Kansas. His father was black, born and raised in Kenya. So is he white, black, bi-racial?
Scumbag Zimmerman, has a Peruvian mother and a white father, does that make him Hispanic, white? The news reported him as a white.
When this first happened, I shook my head as people were saying its gotta be a brown Muslim, or, its a white militia tea party guy. The biggest question is, does it really matter? To some, who would want to divide and cause trouble, yes (media, racists, etc). I think, and this may be my naivete (sp?) is that it doesn't really matter to the majority of us.
NickB79
(19,233 posts)And I've actually had to correct a few other coworkers at times when they believed these individuals weren't really white. As in someone saying "I'd date her, even though she's not white" when referencing someone from Eastern Europe.
But that's what you get living in a state settled by Swedes and Germans: if you can't use freshly blown snowdrifts for camouflage, you ain't white!
Cleita
(75,480 posts)They aren't Nordic white if that is what you are getting at, but there are many variations of white across Europe and parts of Central Asia. It's where our references to Indo-Aryan, Indo-European and Indo-Iranian come from.
Capt. Obvious
(9,002 posts)then they are not white.
Only non-whites need to be identified - even when their race/ethnicity/religion/etc has absolutely nothing to do with the story.