Description of white bombing suspect stirs debate about race

When Austin police Chief Brian Manley described a cellphone recording left by Texas bomb suspect Mark Conditt as “the outcry of a very challenged young man,” the remark caused an outcry.

Because the 23-year-old suspect was white, some people questioned whether the same level of compassion would have been afforded a person of color.

“Here you have a case of a young white male who killed and injured people of color, and we’re culturally more concerned about his story, about his life, about what led him to take these lives,” said David Leonard, professor in the department of critical culture, gender and race studies at Washington State University. “It’s a striking reminder of a racial empathy gap that persists.”

For many observers, the comments about Conditt were the latest example in which a white suspect seemed to receive an injection of humanity that is less often extended to blacks, Muslims and others. Conditt kept the Texas capital in a state of fear for weeks, planting five bombs that killed two people and wounded four others.

The community college dropout died Wednesday after setting off a bomb inside his red SUV as police closed in.

Investigators said his motive was still unclear, despite the discovery of the 25-minute cellphone recording in which he talked about the bombs.

U.S. law has defined acts of violence or intimidation linked to foreign groups such as the Islamic State as terrorism. Homegrown extremist groups such as neoNazis and the Ku Klux Klan have not been labeled that way, even if they've employed similar tactics.

Similarly, when Stephen Craig Paddock was identified as the gunman who rained bullets down on a Las Vegas concert last fall, the white retired accountant was characterized as a “lone wolf.”

The reaction on social media was swift.

“Remember how they talked about innocent black children” like Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice or Freddie Gray, tweeted Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Those young black males, all killed by police, were described as “thugs” by some authorities.

Some critics have also taken exception to media coverage that included Conditt’s friends and family describing him as kind.

The Rev. Yvette Griffin, a black Detroit pastor, said blacks and Muslims don’t seem to get the same presumption of innocence as other suspects.

“The words are kinder and gentler” for whites, she said.

Conditt