There’s a lot of debate over when the word “terrorism” is appropriate.

The common consensus among leftist, mainstream media outlets is that if the suspect in question is a Muslim, they’re automatically labeled a “terrorist,” while white men who commit acts of mass murder are not.

The main issue here lies in the fact that many people — on both sides of the political spectrum — associate the word “terrorist” with a foreign attacker, but never with an American-born person. Many have argued — and continue to argue — that this is entirely related to race.

Recently, the term “domestic terrorism” has been used by many to describe American citizens that commit acts of violence. Perhaps that’s exactly what we should call Micah X. Johnson — the shooter who murdered five Dallas police officers in cold blood. Certainly we can all agree that it’s fitting since he did commit an act of terrorism, right? There’s no other way to describe what happened in Dallas but as an act of terrorism. It meets all the required criteria.

After all, anyone who commits an act of terror on a group of law-abiding American people is a terrorist. Their race, ethnicity, religious ideology and gender are completely irrelevant. Terrorists should be called terrorists.

In violent times such as these, sometimes it seems almost inappropriate to worry about rhetoric, though these conversations are still important to have. We need to worry about sticking together and uniting as one — not dividing ourselves over semantics.

Sources:

Breitbart.com

Politico.com