If a terrorist attack took place right here in the U.S., wouldn't it be a national story? Terrorism may be defined as "the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes," but if you asked most people, the term conjures one image: brown people with beards and bombs. Nothing has made that profoundly racist misunderstanding clearer than the news coverage of two violent attacks that happened within roughly 24 hours. On Tuesday morning, the NAACP offices in Colorado Springs, Colorado, came under attack when someone who is believed be a balding white man in his 40s dropped an explosive device that went off a few feet from the building. And on Wednesday morning, news broke of a horrifying mass shooting at satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in France that left 12 dead and several wounded.

Both acts were motivated by radical ideology, but only one of them is being covered by the 24-hour news cycle. What gives?

According to Ebony senior digital editor Jamilah Lemieux, it's because we rush to label attacks carried out by non-whites as "terrorism," but when the perpetrator is white, we view those cases as isolated acts of violence.



Many were upset with the reporting. First, a terrorist act that occurred within virtually the same news cycle across the pond took on much more importance than a terrorist act in the United States. Secondly, the descriptions of the two terrorist events were starkly different.

This type of reporting is not just relegated to terrorism in which most people believe terrorists are brown people with beards and bombs. Other minorities are stigmatized by profiling as they shop, drive, or simply exist in the public sphere.

Here is the reality: This type of reporting has two distinct effects. The first is that it unfairly stigmatizes distinct communities. Muslims feel as if they carry the weight of every Islamist terrorist on their shoulders. Minorities feel the stress of always being watched or singled out irrespective of their social status.

Another effect, however, is the creation of a willfully ignorant populace that endangers us all. Heather Hurlburt, director of New Models of Policy Change, and Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, appeared on the Ed Show to discuss the shootings in France and Americans' apprehensions a few days ago. Their take was rather probative:

Hulburt said that the types of attack that occurred in Paris were less likely in the United States—because she is only visualizing attacks from Islamists as terrorism. O'Hanlon rightfully reminded the audience that America has already suffered a similar fate with more murdered at the hands of our own "terrorists". The only difference is that these were not brown people with beards and bombs.

Americans better wake up. Racism is a cancer. Prejudice is a cancer. More importantly, it does not only hurt the aggrieved but the perpetrator as well. As America seals its borders to "brown people with beards and bombs," right-wing terrorists like the followers of Cliven Bundy and other well-armed militias will hit us when we least expect it.