A white man named Scott Michael Greene is in custody for the shooting deaths of two Iowa police officers on Wednesday. Greene had only recently been ejected from a high school football game by cops who asked him to leave because he unfurled a confederate flag.

Imagine if the man who killed these two officers was black or brown? The news story would have very quickly been linked to Black Lives Matters’ criticism of police violence, or a “homegrown terrorist” attack possibly motivated by radical Islam. But, since it was only a racist white man as the alleged killer, national media seemed to have lost interest.

The idea of brown and black bodies as threatening is as old as the US itself. In a new book author Kumarini Silva tackles the question of how racial, ethnic, and religious identity has become much more complicated in the post September 11th world.

Listen to the interview.