TJ Walker argues that blaming violent attacks on a perpetrator's race or background is a tribal shortcut that avoids real questions: how did an unstable person obtain multiple weapons, travel across the country, and breach security at a high-profile event? Fixing systems is harder than assigning blame.
Chapters
By the way, we can play this game all day long. He's biracial, Black and white, so what's the argument? Mixed-race people are dangerous. He went to an elite science school, so we should say higher education creates violent extremists, right? Should we fingerprint every valedictorian? Congratulations on your GPA, please report to the police station. This is what happens when people start— or stop thinking and start tribalizing. Everything becomes evidence for whatever narrative you already wanted to push. But here's the part that actually matters. This guy allegedly traveled across the country with weapons, a shotgun, a handgun, multiple tools for violence, knives. And instead of focusing on how this happens, how someone unstable gets access, travels, and gets close to a high-profile event, we get this nonsense debate about which group can we blame. Because blaming a tribe is easy, fixing a system is hard. Ultimize. Ultimize.