The Daily Mail and its ‘Dark Skinned’ terrorists

Why did the Daily Mail run that front website page headline on the 17th April: “Boston bomber is caught on camera: FBI reveals store footage shows ‘dark-skinned man in backwards hat’ planting second explosive”?

Not only was the description extremely inaccurate but when more accurate descriptions were known - the suspects were Caucasian or white, the authorities and media outlets such as the Daily Mail made no reference to skin colour.

In the USA President of NAACP Benjamin Todd Jealous was scathing of CNN news when their anchorman broadcaster cited the ‘Dark Skinned’ suspects in his news report:

Our concern is that CNN used an overly broad, unhelpful and potentially racially inflammatory categorization to describe the potential suspect. History teaches us that too often people of color are unfairly targeted in the aftermath of acts of terrorism."

These fears were quickly played out in the USA when even before the suspects were publically known. After the CNN report, a Muslim woman in Boston was attacked and punched with the perpetrator screaming:

F... you Muslims. You are terrorists! I hate you!."

In America, Europe and throughout many countries in the world, non-white peoples held their breadth praying the Boston perpetrators didn’t look like us. Muslims prayed too that they were not Muslims. Truth is we know that too many politicians and too many media outlets play fast and loose with who they seek to demonize. The default position by some seems to be “these shocking acts allow us to kick not just the perpetrators but also all ‘dark skinned’ or Muslim people.”

Actually this shoddy or willfully spiteful journalism serves no-one, except of course the politics of hate, wherever that lies.

Simon Woolley