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‘Makes it sound like a coffee spill’: NAACP blasted as ‘tone deaf’ after labeling 9/11 attacks as ‘horrific INCIDENT’
The NAACP has been accused of downplaying the gravity of the 9/11 attacks, with critics up in arms after the organization deemed them a “horrific incident” with no mention of terrorism in a tweet to mark their 19th anniversary.
“Today we remember all the lives lost and families affected during the horrific incident that occurred in 2001. #NeverForget,” the organization wrote in a tweet on Friday, captioning an image of the New York skyline featuring the words “Always remember.”
The post did not go over well, soon swarmed by a barrage of commenters who rushed to slam the organization’s use of the term “incident,” arguing it downplayed the severity of the attacks, which left more than 3,000 people dead in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington DC after hijackers commandeered four commercial airliners and deliberately crashed them into buildings.
You could possibly be more tone deaf, I suppose. But I really doubt it. Very on-brand, as usual.
— Adam Clanton (@adamclanton) September 11, 2020
My thesaurus doesn't agree that this act of war /terrorist attack could be called an incident. Makes it sound like an accident or coffee spill or getting a latté when you ordered cappucino.
— Molly Reilly (@MollyRe89656631) September 11, 2020
Though one of the standard dictionary definitions for ‘incident’ includes “a violent event, such as a fracas or assault,” netizens were up in arms over the NAACP’s failure to employ harsher words to describe the attacks, many insisting the description should have referred to “terrorism.”
An incident is what happens when two cars back into each other at a parking lot—-9/11- an incidentThe Holocaust- unfortunate eventSlavery- bad behavior Let’s not be afraid to actually what each of these things are!
— Jake
