Was a shooting ‘racially motivated’ or just ‘racist’?
When discussing the case of a white man who shot three Black people in Jacksonville, Fla., two weeks ago, words matter.
It pains me to say, but sometimes an adverb is better than an adjective. Even when that adjective is the word racist.
Much of the time, racially motivated or racially charged is misused as a euphemism for racist; that was even the subject of my very first column almost five years ago. But in the case of a white man who shot three Black people in Jacksonville, Fla., two weeks ago, much of the clamor about calling the shooting “racially motivated” instead of “racist” is misplaced.
Worse, it’s imprecise, which lets the racist shooter off the hook more than it should.
The reason? Gerunds are messing with us.
When I first tackled this subject in 2018, George H.W. Bush had just died, and a slew of retrospectives on his life and presidency recalled the racist Willie Horton ads that helped Bush win the 1988 election. The ads stoked white fears of Black criminals, but rather than calling the ads “racist,” most of the Bush hagiographies referred to them as “racially charged” or “racially inflected.” “Racially charged ad” is less direct and less precise than “racist ad,” so the impact is softer, and thus our 41st president got off easier than if we had called him a racist.
Read the full column at Inquirer.com.