KING: How Would The U.S. React If The Planned Parenthood Shooter Was Not A White Male?

Imagine for a moment the nation­al response if a Muslim man killed a police offi­cer, an Iraq war vet­er­an and a young moth­er in a mass shoot­ing in which four oth­er police offi­cers and five oth­er peo­ple were seri­ous­ly injured.

What if it was a refugee who did the killing? An undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grant? Someone from Syria?

Could you imag­ine if the Planned Parenthood shoot­er was a Black Lives Matter pro­test­er? What would the nation­al response be if that pro­test­er shot five police offi­cers, killed one, killed a dec­o­rat­ed war vet­er­an, killed a moth­er and shot 11 peo­ple in all?

Be real here. You know the answer.

If any­one oth­er than an angry white man like Robert Lewis Dear had killed a moth­er, a police offi­cer and a war vet­er­an in a mass shoot­ing, you know and I know that heav­en and earth would move to restrict and penal­ize and demo­nize any­one who even resem­bled or was remote­ly con­nect­ed to that person.

I shud­der at the thought of what might hap­pen to Syrians in America if the shoot­er had been a Syrian. If the shoot­er had ever in his life even post­ed the hash­tag #BlackLivesMatter every sin­gle mem­ber of the mod­ern-day civ­il rights move­ment would be asked how we encour­aged or pro­mot­ed or sanc­tioned such vio­lence. The death threats would come pour­ing in and we would all be at greater risk.

Somehow, though, when a white man ter­ror­izes soci­ety by bring­ing down vio­lent mur­der and may­hem on any­body in his pres­ence, be it a school, a movie the­ater, a gov­ern­ment build­ing or a Planned Parenthood clin­ic, white men get a pass that I am pret­ty dog­gone sure nobody else in America gets.

In spite of the real­i­ty that it has been wide­ly shared that white men are the “biggest ter­ror threat in America,” it’s a real strug­gle to think of any mean­ing­ful push­back against white men to curb such a threat. Even though not a sin­gle Syrian or a sin­gle refugee attacked Paris recent­ly, mass hys­te­ria reached such a fevered pitch in America that over 30 gov­er­nors and the United States House of Representatives came togeth­er in mat­ter of days to make it clear that they didn’t want Syrian refugees com­ing into America.

It appears that America is much more will­ing to plan, shift, restrict, debate, and leg­is­late fic­tion­al threats to our safe­ty than any of the home­grown vari­ety. Ultimately, I’m left to con­clude that America doesn’t real­ly care about its cit­i­zens being ter­ror­ized as long as it’s white men caus­ing the harm.

KING: How would the U.S. react if the Planned Parenthood shoot­er was not a white male?