The New York Times is doing live coverage.
What We Know
- A gunman identified by city and federal law enforcement officials as Dylann Storm Roof, 21, opened fire at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the nation’s oldest black churches, on Wednesday evening, killing nine.
- The Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the church’s pastor and a state senator, was killed, according to the minority leader of the State House of Representatives.
- The police said the other victims were six women and two men.
- The Charleston police chief, Greg Mullen, called the attack a hate crime.
And then – a completely nauseating eyewitness account:
Sylvia Johnson, one of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney’s cousins, said in an interview with NBC that she had spoken with one of the survivors of the shooting, who gave her this account.
The gunman arrived at the church and asked for the pastor, taking a seat next to him for the study meeting. At the end, the survivor told Ms. Johnson, they suddenly heard loud noises. The gunman had opened fire, and reloaded five times.
“Her son was trying to talk him out of doing the act of killing people,” Ms. Johnson said.
According to Ms. Johnson, the survivor said the gunman replied.
“He just said: ‘I have to do it. You rape our women and you are taking over our country. And you have to go.’ “
I need to throw up now.
This is disgusting.
He killed mostly women, because “they” rape “our” women? Oh, wait, I get it. The women are breeding, that’s how they take over our country. Right.
What makes people so scared of people who look different that they feel the need to kill them? Can’t we move beyond tribalism and recognize our common humanity? (You don’t have to answer that….I begin to realize the answer apparently is no)
Apparently, his father gave him a .45 for his 21st birthday.
And I’m sure there’s no white supremacy-related feelings in a family that would give a child the middle name of “Storm”. None at all.
…You have to be carefully taught…
A guy proudly displaying the flags of Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa tells that to people who have lived here for many generations and whose ancestors were dragged here against their wills. Ugh.
But he probably doesn’t see white people as “taking over” in Rhodesia and South Africa. I’ve known people like this; they believe that white people have a natural superiority and are therefore the natural rulers. Black people, I’m told, don’t have the ambition or the flexibility that are required to rule. So we aren’t “taking over” their countries when we conquer other nations and require them to submit to us; we’re merely restoring the natural order of things.
Thank goodness none of the people I know like this ever acted on it in quite this way. Of course, the mere fact that they felt OK voicing these sentiments is an indication of how deeply entrenched racism is in our culture.
People like this don’t see white people as interlopers anywhere they go. White people belong wherever they decide to settle; people of color are supposed to move over to make room, then perform the most undesirable jobs, and do it all with total subservience, and preferably, a vacant smile.
That business about not having the ambition is such a bitter joke. “Look, we’ve tied them down and put 100 pound weights on each limb and flayed all the skin off their backs and injected them with syphilis…and would you believe it, they lack the ambition to shrug all that off and get to work.”
Yeah, that’s what I thought. One man actually referred to women and people of color as being “less evolved”, with brains that are not flexible and are evolved for following rules. How is it possible for female members of a species to be “less evolved” than male members of the same species? And people of color are also the same species, not some sort of subspecies.