Groan-tastic.

Via Providence Journal:

How can we understand last week’s shooting death of three Muslim students in Chapel Hill, N.C.? All were slain in their home. The accused killer, one of their neighbors, allegedly shot them execution-style, with a gun he had used to threaten them several times before.

Police officials and others in Chapel Hill rushed to portray this crime as stemming from a parking dispute. That obscures the fact that these slayings appear to be part of a long-standing and deeply disturbing pattern of hate crimes against Muslims in America. In the period since the 9/11 attacks, the number of hate crimes against Muslims has increased by 1,700 percent.

The Chapel Hill perpetrator’s white skin affords him the privilege of being described as “mentally disturbed” or a “lone wolf.” Yet when a Muslim commits a violent crime, 1.6 billion other Muslims are often held responsible. In the double violence of racism, victimhood is denied and hateful ideologies are swept away. Had it not been for the pushback on social media, the victims of last week’s crime — Deah Shady Barakat, 23; his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21; and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19 — would have been all but forgotten. […]

The double standard applied to people of color who are killed at the hands of white men is clear. Michael Brown, unarmed and with hands raised in the air, was shot dead in Ferguson and accused of being a thief. Trayvon Martin, walking home from school to his family’s home, was killed unarmed yet was depicted as an aggressor. Deah Barakat and Yusor and Razan Abu-Salha were all killed in their home but were nonetheless depicted as having had prior disputes with their neighbor.