Last week, Noah Rothman wrote a piece in Commentary Magazine that blasted the press and police for refusing to call out Islamic terrorism in an attack in Fresno, California. After a man shouting Islamic slogans killed three people, police ridiculously said, “We do not believe… that this is a terrorist-related crime. This is solely based on race.”

Rothman is right that a man randomly shooting people for the color of their skin or for their religious beliefs is committing an act of terror, regardless of whether or not he’s associated with an organization like ISIS. But Rothman goes on to argue that attacks done in the name of Islam are more threatening than those done by run of the mill racists like Dylan Roof because white supremacists don’t control countries and aren’t “in ascendance.” He says, “Unlike the brigade of basement-dwelling white nationalists populating Reddit, Muhammad’s is an ideology with teeth.”

Rothman seems to have missed what’s happening in this country lately. Steve Bannon, a white nationalist, has an office in the White House. Jeff Sessions is our Attorney General. Yesterday, Alabama and Mississippi honored Confederate Memorial Day with state holidays. The Cato Institute recently released a piece on a report from the Government Accountability Office that noted, “Of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, far right wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27 percent).”

But Rothman also misses the history of this country and the legacy of racial terror perpetrated against African-Americans and condoned, if not encouraged, by state and local government. It was not called terrorism but it was exactly that. And it was virtually state sanctioned through Jim Crow laws.

Separate articles in a single newspaper from 1901 voyeuristically describes the lynching of two African-American men in different states. Nowhere do the articles talk about justice for the perpetrators of the mob, just the alleged crimes of the victims.  It was that conspiracy between the press and government that left African-Americans living in fear for most of the 20^th century.

Those of us who grew up in the middle of the Civil Rights Struggle remember bombings and threats that to this day have never been solved or prosecuted. The perpetrators never faced justice and continued to live in our communities. It’s not just that the wounds haven’t healed, it’s that the infection is still just below the surface, as Dylan Roof can attest.

While Rothman is right that we shouldn’t shy from pointing out terrorism when it’s done in the name of Islam, he’s wrong to assume the racism that fueled white supremacy is benign or even in retreat. Before Dylan Roof, a group of white teenagers beat and ran over a man in Jackson, Mississippi, because he was black. And earlier this year, a white man in Kansas shot an Indian-American man to death because he thought he was Islamic.

The threat of homegrown racist terrorists is every bit as scary as the threat of Islamic terrorists. Killers like the ones in Fresno or Santa Barbara or Orlando may be inspired by large organizations based in Middle Eastern countries, but ones like Dylan Roof and those kids in Mississippi are inspired by people right here in this country. While we should be vigilant in prosecuting and preventing such attacks, neither Islamic terrorist nor American racists pose a great threat to the survival of our country unless we give up the freedoms we cherish to combat them.

Thomas Mills

Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >