What does a terrorist look like in the American imagination? For most, it's probably not a white man, like Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, or Paul Ciancia, who opened fire in the Los Angeles International Airport in 2013, killing one TSA officer and injuring seven other agents and travelers. It's probably not an environmental or animal-rights activist, whose attacks on property are often considered acts of terrorism by the FBI.
No. The stereotypical image is of a person with brown skin, maybe wearing clothing perceived as foreign: the suicide bomber in a burka; the long, concealing beard; and, perhaps most powerfully, the turban. These are the physical markers people often associate with Islam, which in turn is often associated with radicalism or extremism.
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