Letters are posted as we receive them during the week, and before they are printed in the paper, so check back frequently to see new letters. If you'd like to send a letter to the editor, use this postmarks submission form, or email your letter directly to mail@austinchronicle.com. Thanks for your patience.

Dear Editor,
    Discussions are swirling around as to why the Austin serial bomber, who killed and terrorized people for weeks, is not called a "terrorist" or "suicide bomber" by the White House and media outlets. [See "Sympathetic Coverage for Austin Bomber," News, March 30.]
    As an American Muslim, it is more challenging and heartbreaking to make sense of the logic for such a stark difference in how such events are covered in the media. We never hear of terrorists who claim to be of Muslim background being addressed as "a very challenged young man." Muslims who have committed such acts are not
   "normalized" as facing mental health and other societal pressures. In addition, there is no room for viewing these individuals as being political as well as religiously neutral.
    Unfortunately, the consequences of the horrible actions of a very few misled individuals are felt and dealt with among thousands of peace-loving Muslims in the form of fear and backlash. My question remains, is the terror caused by a Muslim different or bigger than terror caused by another individual from another faith?

Dear Editor,
    I have been bothered by Michael King's October 2017 article, ANNUAL HALLOWEEN MASK: ARMED WHITE MALE, for months.
    I would have expected Michael King to be raging about the recent Austin bomber being a white male.
    I would also expect ISIS to be enjoying the entire spectacle.

   News Editor Chase Hoffberger responds: Michael King did not write that article, and these days only rages about the White Sox’s pitching rotation.

Dear Editor,
    Both structural and individual racism and white supremacy explains why the Austin Police Department did not initially suspect a racist white American male engaged in domestic terrorism when the first bombs killed three Black and Brown people.
    Instead, Austin Police first engaged in a “blame-the-victim” assault suggesting that one of the Black victims was actually making a bomb when it accidentally exploded. Then when the Latina was killed, the White Supremacist Austin Police suspected a drug cartel.
    Come on.
    Now that the domestic terrorist is revealed to be a racist, Christian home-schooled, young white male – a self-described psychopath – who opposed abortion and homosexuality yet thought it a good idea to get rid of the sex offender registry (?!) AND who was associated with survivalists, one must wonder: Will the Austin Police Department update its suspect profiling criteria and methodology as well as assisting the FBI and other law enforcement in doing the same thing?
    Had the APD not been paralyzed from the outset by structural and individual racism and white supremacy, it is AT LEAST CONCEIVABLE the domestic terrorist, Mark Conditt, could have been identified and apprehended earlier – than, say, if the PD was looking for drug cartels or something – thus eliminating weeks of outright terror inflicted on Austin through police white supremacy, incompetence, and outright stupidity.
    And need it be asked, had the bombs had gone off in West Austin or Northwest Hills, whether the APD response would have been vastly different and immediate?
    Structural White Supremacy in the Austin and other law enforcement agencies needs to be smashed into a thousand pieces the way President John F. Kennedy wanted to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces.
    Law enforcement is necessary in civilization, but it is necessary for the structural white supremacy to be smashed into a thousand pieces and that police officers be hired or retained based on how well they have identified, neutralized, or mastered and controlled their own individual, societal-inflicted white internalized racism.

   News Editor Chase Hoffberger responds: No Latina was killed. Esperanza Herrera, a Latina, was injured on March 12.

Dear Mr. Whittaker,
    Thank you for your inspired and sensitive article ["What We (Don’t) Talk About When We (Don’t) Talk About Death," Screens, March 23] on Helen Whitney's new documentary Into the Night, airing on PBS Monday, March 26. Your writing is extraordinary. Bravo!