A simple test of racism is now available for all to see: to what extent to commentators, public and private, decide that because an Arab and/or Muslim went crazy and shot up a bunch of people, therefore all Arabs and/or Muslims are somehow suspect and must be subjected to special loyalty tests.
This makes a lot of sense, just as the arrest of Timothy McVeigh for the Oklahoma City bombing led to a mass vetting of white males.
Collective guilt is a standard biped reaction to people who don’t look or behave like themselves. It’s far older than Christian anti-Semitism based on the crime of Judas and the Pharisees although that’s a good one to recollect at times like these. Here’s another: the Armenian minority was considered insufficiently loyal to the Young Turks after they overthrew the Ottoman sultante, so why not use World War I as an excuse to march a million of them into the Syrian desert to die of starvation? Only logical.
This kneejerk reaction lies at the heart of terrorist attacks on civilians and the familiar waves of racist or ethnic chauvinism. No doubt Fox will pander to its bug-eyed loyalists and whip it up—let’s see if the Republican Party distinguishes itself in this arena as well.
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