Since 9/11, many journalists have been less than rigorous with their application of the terrorism label; and many right-wing media critics are apoplectic, in the immediate aftermath of violence perpetrated by apparent Muslims, when careful journalists wait for evidence of motive rather than reflexively calling an attack “terrorism.” Insufficiently rigorous journalists error in the opposite direction too, failing to apply the terrorist label to violence that clearly meets any reasonable definition, sometimes due to political correctness and other times because the terrorism was perpetrated by a white person or a Christian or an Israeli. Today, “terrorism is typically associated with Muslim extremism,” Dara Lind writes. “When white people commit mass shootings, their ideology isn't as often brought to the fore. But because of the history of terrorism in the South, for many, labeling the Charleston church shooting terrorism is a way to recognize that black lives matter.”

By demanding that the Charleston church attack be dubbed terrorism even before key details were known, observers meant to assert some mix of other claims, including that even the earliest details of the attack very strongly suggested that it was rooted in racial hatred against blacks and white-supremacism; that the killer acted every bit as abhorrently as, say, the men who attacked the Boston marathon; that the black lives lost to this and other acts of white supremacist terrorism matter every bit as much as the lives lost on, say, September 11, 2001; that the press, the police, and politicians would’ve responded differently to this attack had it been perpetrated by a Muslim gunman; or that Charleston warrants a response in keeping with what follows attacks by Muslim terrorists.

I find the first four of these claims more compelling than the last.

As for how to respond to the Charleston attack, that is a bit more complicated. As noted, I call it a terrorist attack because it meets the accepted definition. And insofar as the mass murder and hate crime deserves the maximum opprobrium that a society can muster; insofar as the lives lost matter every bit as much as those of any murder victims ever have; and insofar as a radical, poisonous ideology is partly responsible for the killing, I endorse treating it “like a terrorist attack.”

But there is another sense in which it is vital that we do not treat Charleston “like a terrorist attack.” In America, the label terrorism often adds more heat than light; helps demagogues to manipulate the public; helps frighten people far beyond what is justified by the actual threat that members of the target group faces; clouds the judgment and moral compass of politicians, bureaucrats, police, prosecutors, and judges; and leads directly to the state needlessly victimizing innocent people.What a shame that a label increasingly seen as a proxy for caring can produce such a callous response!