Abstract
On Sunday, 5 August 2012, at approximately 10:00 a.m., an armed Wade Michael Page walked into the Oak Creek, Wisconsin Sikh gurdwara, a place of worship. Page killed six worshippers and injured four others. Although the murderer had links to several white supremacist organizations, authorities would not speculate on the motive of this incident. In fact, the word race was rarely mentioned in relation to this case. The lack of a sustained examination of racism as a motivating factor in this crime was very troubling within the media’s portrayal of this incident. Through a critical analysis of structural racism, this article highlights how the silences of racism, racialized identities, and the connections of racist acts such as the Wisconsin gurdwara murders to hate crimes perpetuates racialized and colonized violence on brown bodies. This structural racism absolves many Americans (and we would add many Canadians) of their deeply rooted racist beliefs and ideologies. By providing a counter-hegemonic narrative, this article discusses how the homogenization of brown bodies, such as Sikhs and Muslims, has very real material consequences in a North American context. Finally, this article discusses the problematic framing of this incident as ‘Domestic Terrorism’ and the importance of de-Islamizing Sikhaphobia in the post-9-11-2001 context.
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