someone is bombing black people in austin, and this is nothing new to black communities

By Arielle Gray, AFROPUNK Contributor *

In the span of two weeks, there have been 3 bombings in Austin, TX. Two of the bombs resulted in the deaths of the victims- 39 year old Anthony Stephan House was killed on March 2nd and 17-year-old Drayle, Mason was killed last Monday. A third bomb seriously injured a 75 year old woman though she survived and is currently in recovery. The bombs, disguised as plain packages, were delivered to the doorsteps of each victim and exploded when picked up or handled. Police have only recently come to the conclusion that bombs were more than likely made by the same assailant and that the bombings were not random but targeted attacks.

Law enforcement has unsurprisingly failed to label these bombs as hate crimes. Considering what we now know, about the assailant and the mode of delivery of the bombs, it isn’t hard to see these bombs as acts of domestic terrorism.  All of the victims are of color- two were African American and the one surviving victim is Hispanic. On top of that, The Washington Post recently reported that the victims “had relatives who were good friends and prominent members of Austin’s African American community”. Anthony House was the stepson of former pastor Freddie Dixon and the 17 year old was the grandson of long time mentor Norman Mason, who provides guidance to Black athletes attending the University of Texas, Austin.

The Black community is not a stranger to racially motivated bombings. Since, 9/11, the United States has perpetuated a rhetoric concerning bombers and what they look like, birthing a xenophobic, Islamophobic fear through language and media. The fact that most bombers who’ve targeted minority communities in the US are white is conveniently left out of the equation and cut out of the ensuing conversations when examining domestic terrorism. History is subsequently erased and rewritten and the faces of domestic terrorists colored from white to brown.

Bombs seem to be the historical weapon of choice for right wing terrorists, aside from the noose and arson. Before the sophistication of bombs and the  accessibility to info about building them, domestic terrorists used sticks of dynamite to achieve their desired outcome. Schools rarely delve into this portion of America’s sordid past- most of us only learned about the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing, which claimed the lives of four Black girls in 1963. Any analysis of white supremacists utilizing bombs to incite terror has been conveniently skipped over and forgotten as we move further into the 21st century.

Before the 16th Street attack, the Black Wall Street Church (and the infamous Black Wall Street) in Tulsa Oklahoma was bombed in 1921 and over the next 40 years, the South endured a sudden increase in bombings. 1957 saw the bombings of four black churches and surrounding residences in Montgomery, AL, including the home and church of Dr. Martin Luther King. Six years after, Birmingham was rocked by a series of residential bombings, so many in fact that it gained the nickname “Bombingham”. As Jim Crow disintegrated, Black families began moving into the predominantly white neighborhood west of Center St. Over the span of 20 years, the neighborhood experienced over 40 bombings, all thinly veiled attacks on Black transplants. NAACP attorney Arthur Shores’ house was a “frequent target’ – he also happened to be working on Birmingham’s segregated ordinances at the time.

The number of bombings on black churches and homes declined as incidents of arson,  a cheaper method of destruction, increased. In 1985, two bombs were dropped on a block of row houses in West Philly by the local police. The targets were members of the MOVE Black liberation group.  11 victims were claimed by the bombs and the ensuing fires destroyed neighboring homes, further displacing Black residents in the area. Since then, we’ve seen bombings at churches, mosques and homes though we will never truly know the numbers considering the majority of hate crimes aren’t reported to the police.

The new attacks in Austin are a stark reminder of the bomb’s racialized  history in America and the devastating toll it takes, both on life and our overall sense of safety. Some news platforms have been comparing Austin, TX to the Unabomber, whose parcel bombs killed 3 over a span of 30 years. This comparison couldn’t be further from reality. The Unabomber’s targets were people on the cutting edge of technology- this analysis fails to take into account that bombs have historically been used in racially motivated attacks, not as a part of some Machiavellian dogma. These bombings are not anything new- they’re merely a reimagined representation of how white supremacy continues to terrorize brown and black bodies in this “post racial” landscape. 

* Arielle Gray on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bonitafrobum