The June 22 commentary, “Shooters of color are called ‘terrorists’; white shooters are called ‘mentally ill'” by Anthea Butler gets exactly backwards how our media responds to mass shootings.

The media did not blame anti-white racism when black Omar Thornton killed eight white coworkers at Hartford Beef Distributors. Indeed, the main concern was that he was driven to it by racist comments his girlfriend claimed the victims had made. When Nadal Hasan killed 13 people at Fort Hood, the government avoided putting any of the blame on his Muslim religion, and refused for years to call it terrorism, even though that greatly reduced the survivors’ benefits for the families of the victims.

Just the other day, United States Attorney Carmen Ortiz denied that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was religiously motivated in the Boston Marathon bombing, despite his clear manifesto being public for more than two years.

In contrast, everyone has acknowledged the racial motivations of Dylann Roof as soon as they were made public, and the Miami Herald and the Nightly Show are castigating people for waiting that long. Moreover, as the campaign against the Confederate battle flag shows, this is seen as part of a larger problem within the white community.

Popular news and opinion site Salom.com once posted an article exonerating Muslims for Tsarnaev, and recently another blaming whites for Roof. Finally, note how black violence in protest of police brutality elicits condemnations of police brutality while Roof citing black-on-white crime as a motive has elicited condemnations of the Council of Conservative Citizens for reporting on black-on-white crime.

There is a double standard, but it is one that offers excuses for violence by ethnic and religious minorities, and collective guilt for violence by whites as whites.

Michael Jose

Augusta