Our relief that we don’t resemble the killer comes with feelings of conflict and guilt: People are dead and families are devastated. I doubt many people of color were celebrating and high-fiving each other because we didn’t look like the bad guy. But I know that if the shooter had been black, the national conversation would somehow “straw-man” its way into being about Black Lives Matter and black criminality. God help us if it had happened at a rap concert. “Black-on-black crime” would’ve been on the tongues of every demagogue blowhard with a platform, and black athletes wouldn’t be able to kneel in protest of police brutality again without having a massacre thrown in their faces. (In fact, Fox News managed to get in a swipe at black NFL players anyway.)
If he had been Hispanic, it would be the reason “we can’t let these people in our country.” Whether he was actually an illegal immigrant would’ve been obfuscated into irrelevancy within the first day of reporting, as pundits bleated about massive deportation and building walls (logistics not included).
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