Many people think that more immigration into Western countries leads to more terrorism, because immigrants from non-Western cultures are more likely to be terrorists. My research finds a very different kind of relationship. Immigrants aren’t committing terrorism in Western Europe. Rather, native citizens appear to be committing terrorism because of their hostility to immigrants.

Perhaps this is why one day in New Haven, staring into the semicircle of oak trees in my backyard, I wondered what it would mean to ask random white men how they understood their privilege. I imagined myself — a middle-aged black woman — walking up to strangers and doing so.

Je crois qu’on enseigne avec soin aux Blancs à ne pas reconnaître le privilège blanc, tout comme on enseigne aux hommes à ne pas reconnaître le privilège masculin.

For a lot of white people, the mere suggestion that being white has meaning will cause great umbrage. Certainly generalizing about white people will. Right now, me saying “white people,” as if our race had meaning, and as if I could know anything about somebody just because they’re white, will cause a lot of white people to erupt in defensiveness.

Over the past 20 years, the mainstream media has failed to properly contextualize the Columbine shooting as part of a cultural narrative of exceptionalism that protects would-be killers and abusers. The misleading portrait of “outcast” white boys, which is still applied to shooters like Dylann Roof, positions these dominators as far outside the norm, maintains an illusion of white innocence, and argues for the legitimacy of patriarchal power.