#theme: perception

Percagic (per-say-gihk)

A term for when one's perception of others changes based on if they are actively perceiving you or not. This may manifest as being docile until acknowledged, then becoming hostile, like the entity Circuit from the Minecraft horror mod The Broken Script.

Flag ID: An image with two overlapped rectangles on a white background. In front is a red vertical rectangle and behind it is a black horizontal rectangle. In the center is a black asymmetrical diamond shape. End ID.

Attack for @rwuffles (Mod Jackson)

Points: 5

     The perception of white crime within the media, government, and courts of law often repositions accountability from the perpetrator to their emotional disorders or mental health. White terrorism and shootings become individualized rather than understood in larger social contexts and as a result, white individuals are not associated with the crimes of their racial counterparts but the same does not apply for Muslims or Arabs. I argue that such deflections and repositioning of accountability serves as a strategy for in-groups (white and male) to preserve their hegemonic status by first framing an out-group as the opposition and then advancing sympathy narratives for white perpetrators in the structures of media and law. I will discuss this phenomenon by focusing on the Oklahoma City bombing, Charleston church shooting, and Orlando nightclub shooting.

    In a precarious environment of fake news, editable social media posts, and click bait, the news stories made available must be assessed for reliability because biases and tactics of perception exist everywhere. Throughout the course of history, various groups have occupied the position of enemy or out-group depending on location and context. Irish immigrants, Jewish folks, those from a Japanese background, black people, Arabs, and Muslims have been just a few groups that have been given this status. In the context of terrorism and extremism, Arabs and Muslims have been constructed to be the face of such crimes even pre-9/11. The formation and support of Israel after World War II, Arab countries’ refusal to export oil to the United States in the Arab oil embargo of 1967 and 1973, and the Iranian-Islamic Revolution of 1979 are only a few events that enhanced the contemporary perception of Arabs as the opposition to the United States (Klassen, 2014, 137).  Under this framework, intensified by the September 11 attacks, various structures formed the perception that Muslims and Arabs are an out-group filled with anti-democratic and anti-American terrorists. Terrorism became an act that could only be carried out by them. The notion of how perception functions to stereotype groups and present a certain image can be seen with the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. The first few news reports and investigations into the incident claimed it was committed by a Muslim man with the public agreeing that it had “Muslim terrorism” written all over it (Klassen, 2014, 141). The bomber was white American Timothy McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran, who was motivated by his frustration with the government. By framing Arabs and Muslims as the foe, citizens may feel a need to be protected. The protector then becomes the white saviour men and the government allowing them to preserve their hegemonic rule as control and decision-making powers are placed in their hands.

    With white terrorism, narratives of mental illness are often employed to divert the fact that white people could also be agents of terrorism and carriers of radical political ideologies. In attempts to maintain the very biblical and historical idea that white leaders are the civilized ones and thus know how to govern nations, any “outlier” from that idea is hidden or excused (Kunst, Myhren & Onyeador, 2018, 1889). The media tends to play a critical role in pushing this narrative shown through studies on U.S. news coverage. It was found that terrorism committed by non-white individuals was associated with a political or religious ideology while white domestic terrorists were often humanized (Kunst, Myhren & Onyeador, 2018, 1889). Life stories, personal details, and accounts by family or friends are a few techniques news outlets use to invoke sympathetic responses. In the Charleston church shooting of 2015, Dylan Roof killed nine black church members. His family described their shock stating, “We didn’t see this coming” (Powell, 2018, 4).  He was framed as a lone-wolf and a mentally ill young man that was failed by society but he later cited in a prison journal that he did not regret his crime and is not psychologically unwell (Zapotosky, 2017).  In fact, he was clear about his racial and political motives yet the words white supremacist, radical, extremist, and terrorist were rarely being used to describe him particularly by mainstream media. The sympathy narrative does not only arise in the media but the legal system as well with lawyers using insanity claims or past traumas to deflect crimes. Roof even fired his lawyers because he did not want his mental health evidence to be presented in the court claiming he was mentally fine (Zapotosky, 2017). To compare Dylan Roof to Muslim perception, the 2016 Pulse club shooting in Orlando committed by Omar Mateen was immediately linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In a call to the police, he stated his allegiance to the group and asked America to stop bombing Syria and Iraq (Visser & Couwels, 2016). Both Roof and Mateen committed acts of terrorism with known political ideologies but the framing of the stories were different with Roof not being labelled a terrorist and Mateen’s mental health not being considered despite reports of his disruptive and unstable background. These narratives are presented by white-controlled structures and work to protect the in-group’s value and level of trust among societies (Kunst, Myhren & Onyeador, 2018, 1890).