A racist entered a church famous for black community and civil rights. He was welcomed. He remained there for an hour, and then he stood and began shooting people. When one of them tried to talk him out of it he said, “No, you’ve raped our women, and you are taking over the country … I have to do what I have to do.” He reloaded several times. He ultimately killed 9 people. He let one live, asking if she’d been shot, and said he wanted her to tell people what he did. Friends said he has been talking about blacks lately and apparently he told neighbors about plans to shoot blacks. No one took him seriously.
After he was arrested, he confessed and said he wanted to start a race war. He went there specifically to kill black people. That is a simple, horrible fact.
This is not about gun control. That’s an important discussion, but not the one we need to have.
This is not because he was evil. He was not possessed by the devil, or driven to it by any supernatural means.
This is not about mental illness, or what meds he was on.
He was a human being, and he did what other ignorant, fearful, misguided, hate-filled human beings have done throughout history. He is not, at all, unusual.
No, what we need to talk about, desperately, is how he got that way. Where he got this hatred and fear of black people. His family. His friends. People he talked to online. What media he consumes. Not to excuse his actions, not in the least, but because what so many people seem to try so very hard to ignore is how deeply ingrained racism is in this country.
Right now, right now on Twitter he has supporters and apologists. The /r/Coonhunt board on Reddit is complaining about anti-white biased media coverage. Check the message boards at Stormfront or any of the other white supremicist sites, if you can stomach it. And those are the extremes. There are also the many people who don’t really care that some black people got shot, they just know better than to say it out loud. There are jokes. A big chunk of white America may be horrified that anyone died, but they would also be happy if all the blacks would just leave, because they want to take back America, whatever the hell that means. There are people trying incredibly hard to make this an attack on religion, because they are unable or unwilling to face the reality.
The victims were not thugs. They did absolutely nothing to provoke an attack, other than being black. Roof told police he almost didn’t go through with it because “everyone was so nice to him.” Roof is 21, he’s not a hothead kid. And he has admitted in no uncertain terms that he wanted to kill blacks. There really is no way to spin this as anything other than a racist hate crime, although people are trying so very hard to do just that.
Don’t let people name Roof as a lone gunman, mentally ill, or evil. Don’t name him anything that labels him an aberration or an outlier or an exception. He’s not alone. He’s just the one that committed to his goal, and he’s the one who got caught. There are nearly 300,000 hate crimes in the U.S. every year.
Roof is a cockroach, the one you see in the kitchen when you turn on the light, and it is good that he’s been stopped. What we need to be looking for are the hundreds, thousands, millions more we don’t see.
Note that I am not denying that racism exists in this country and needs to be addressed.
However, the Charleston shooter literally came out and said that he was doing what he was doing because he didn’t think there were enough people who thought the way he did. Because there wasn’t a large enough “support network”, for lack of a better phrase, for racist jackasses like him, and because he wanted to “inspire” the creation of one.
He was a lone murderer, because he literally could not find anyone to help him, and he’s said exactly that.
He was very much alone, and I, personally, see that as a positive development, considering that even 30 years ago he might not have been.