The tweets on the #WacoThugs hashtag may flatten the details of the situation that occurred, but the larger point is that the details in many violent encounters that involve police get flattened and twisted to serve an agenda. Whether the details are flattened to justify a week-long curfew, mass arrests, and the presence of riot police or to make a point about how a calm police presence is notable when the perpetrators of violence are white, the result is that we’re not really talking about the specific situation at all—we’re using it to make a point about how the facts get distorted.
That’s something else that’s in sharp relief in Waco right now. When, for example, the shooting in Garland occurred earlier this month, CNNinterviewed leaders at mosques for reactions; after the funeral for Freddie Gray in Baltimore, the media sought statements from Martin Luther King’s surviving family to assess what his reaction might be to the protests. When violence is committed by people who aren’t white, their actions are treated as representative of their entire communities. That’s something that anybody with a 101-level understanding of race and media in America understands, but it’s also something that the shoot-out at the Twin Peaks in Waco perfectly encapsulates. There is no question about what the incident in Waco says about white people, or whether white leaders need to be more vocal in urging white people away from violence. No one questions whether white culture is partly to blame, or whether white leaders of the past would be disappointed in the situation.
Those sentiments are fairly absurd to express, in fact. Nothing ever says anything about “white people,” and “white culture” is a ridiculous concept to attempt to articulate; how Ronald Reagan or John Lennon might feel about the shoot-out in Waco is an utter non-sequitur.
All of which makes the media reaction to Waco a fascinating mirror to hold up to the media reactions in other situations. Positing hypotheticals is rarely particularly useful, but it’s nonetheless difficult to imagine that if a shoot-out involving dozens of young black men that ended with nearly thirty casualties had happened in a strip mall in Waco, it would be perceived as an isolated incident involving only the people who drew their guns—or that police would be chatting and friendly with people in the area in gang attire afterward.
In other words, the details captured in the tweets about the #WacoThugs or about the need to #StopWhiteOnWhiteCrime may miss the nuance of the situation—indeed, they may not be all that pertinent to the situation in Waco at all—but that’s far from a flaw. It’s kind of the whole point.