What if the Nashville bomber was a Black, an immigrant, or a Muslim? Netizens call out the double standards of media

By now, the US authorities have successfully identified the person of interest in Nashville bombing -- by name, by age and by origin. The "63-year-old Anthony Quinn Warner, a Tennessee man" was behind the bombing. His motive is still a mystery, but that's not the point. What if he were a Black, a Mexican, a brown, an immigrant or worse, a Muslim?

Those who know the western media, know all too well how the description and the narrative would change. The word terrorist and terrorism would be all over the news. Wouldn't it?

"What I find most troubling isn't that the Nashville suicide bomber is described as lonely, mentally ill, and a dog lover, it's that he's humanized b/c he is White. If he were Black, Arab, Brown, he (and an entire community) would have been demonized, dissected & dehumanized," goes a post that was not just retweeted a hundred times but resonated with a thousand as well. 

World is never going to forget me: The Tennessee man

Authorities have identified 63-year-old Anthony Quinn Warner from Antioch, Tennessee as the Nashville bomber. His neighbour Rick Laude has come on board and shared his random friendly chat with Warner.

Laude said he casually asked during one of his run ins with Warner if, "Santa is going to bring you anything goof for Christmas?" To which, Warner replied, "Oh, yeah, Nashville and the world is never going to forget me." Just the kind of statements the mainstream media and popular public opinion attribute often to terrorists.
 

So that makes him a terrorist right?    

At least by the rule of precedence in western media, any random shooting incident becomes a case of suspected robbery, drugs, terrorism, depending on who's involved. In the recent past, cases of similar nature but with different narratives have gone wild.

In 2010, a Somali teenager's attempt to bomb a Christmas tree lighting in Portland, Oregon was thwarted. The headlines were a rehash on the lines of "A terrorist bombing attempt at Portland holiday tree lighting." However, Anthony Quinn Warner was a "lone Nashville bomber, a Tennessee man who loved dogs; killed in blast."

In 2015, while the police were investigating the fatal shooting of nine African Americans at Emmanuel Church in Charleston as a hate crime committed by a white man, it was noticed and equally widely reported how the word 'terrorism' was not a part of the hate crime. The white male, (at the time a suspect) 21-year-old Dylann Roof was nowhere described as a terrorist or a possible terrorist by the reporting media.

Such is the power of colour that it clouds the judgement. A white supremacist is likely to be, "mental ill," or at times, "a victim of mistreatment or maybe even inadequate mental healthcare system."  But, shooters or bombers of colour are 'thugs or terrorists," goes the narrative.