If there’s one thing we learned from the media Saturday about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s sentencing to the death penalty, it’s that Slate contributor Seth Stevenson spends longer than 14-and-a-half hours online to shop for a single pair of pants. And if there’s one thing we learned from Twitter, Tsarnaev either is or isn’t white, and that had a lot to do with the jury’s decision.
https://twitter.com/tr00ist/status/599307515126353920
Except he is white. RT @tr00ist I'm about 99% sure that Tsarnaev wouldn't be murdered by the state if he was white.
— Kerfuffle Actual? (@shoshido) May 15, 2015
The fight over whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is white goes all the way back to April 2013, when Salon contributor David Sirota expressed his hope that the bomber would be found to be a white American. After the Tsarnaev brothers were fingered, the fretting over their skin color continued. Salon editor at large Joan Walsh wrote that they “are quite literally Caucasian, as in from the Caucuses …. And ethnically in this country, we count Americans of Russian descent, as well as Chechens, as white.” Her analysis was echoed by The Daily Beast’s Peter Beinart, who wrote that “the Tsarnaevs hail from the Caucasus, and are therefore, literally, ‘Caucasian.’ You can’t get whiter than that.”
That’s pretty white. So what’s this business about the chances of Tsarnaev not being “murdered by the state if he was white”?
https://twitter.com/BayAreaFan2/status/599313285494673408
@EdgeOfEurope No, no, he’s not white because he’s a Muslim from the Caucasus. If he wasn’t Muslim, then he’d be white. @tr00ist
— 16 Handles fan accou? (@BasedKashiBar) May 15, 2015
https://twitter.com/tr00ist/status/599313818800365570
What the hell color do you think he is? He's white, Derpy. #FryJahar @tr00ist https://t.co/uaMvSjJqsX
— Pablo (@Pablo_1791) May 15, 2015
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https://twitter.com/tr00ist/status/599320002068484096
https://twitter.com/sven10077/status/599322016693510145
https://twitter.com/sven10077/status/599322108481642496
https://twitter.com/USAFMEDIC21/status/599326017178705921
@BillySullivan7 @DoubleStraps @tr00ist he's arab
— Negro Spiritual (@ChavinDontExist) May 15, 2015
@goodtimewillie @tr00ist Caucasian doesn't mean white. White is Caucasian, Arab is Caucasian. Caucasian is a race. White is a description.
— Negro Spiritual (@ChavinDontExist) May 15, 2015
https://twitter.com/tr00ist/status/599327415073013761
https://twitter.com/TRobert7/status/599364160334487553
https://twitter.com/TRobert7/status/599367767180124161
What is up with all of these white men on Twitter and their opinions anyway?
https://twitter.com/TRobert7/status/599368566505394177
https://twitter.com/suepurbly/status/599391946067574785
https://twitter.com/suepurbly/status/599393808808333312
White people: immune from execution and unable to stop talking.
https://twitter.com/JohnRiversToo/status/599642434902044672
https://twitter.com/KevinNR/status/599642684538499073
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