a moment of clarity.

an ongoing discussion. 

words. 

"Imagine this scenario: a crowd of largely white people takes to the streets in a town near you, demanding an end to Islamist terrorism. A group of militants waving ISIS banners turns up to harass the protesters, and when the protesters attempt to usher them away, the militants open fire, injuring five people. What do you think the media would call the people doing the shooting?

... in America, black people are a minority by any conceivable measure. White people surpass them in terms of numbers, income, health, and pretty much any other metric you can think of. The asymmetry of power is absolute. (As Ghostface Killah once put it on GZA’s “Investigative Reports,” “Aim at the white shadows with big barrels/ They used guns while we angrily shot arrows.”) And yet, because it’s the relatively powerless who are the victims of terror, the word is never used.

So let’s be honest: white supremacists who shoot up a Black Lives Matter rally are terrorists, plain and simple. But that’s not all they are. They’re de facto instruments of a state that has inflicted a similar terror for generations. If you’re the right sort of person — white, affluent, lucky — America is a great place to live, a nation of opportunity and prosperity. But the structure that supports that state is built on oppression, and that oppression is enforced by systemic terror."

FLAVORWIRE: Why We Don’t — But Should — Call White Supremacist Shooters “Terrorists”