I’m in transit with spotty internet access, but clearly we need a thread to discuss the horrific race crime in Charleston. I’m dismayed that not only was this an act of premeditated, racially motivated murder, but the media is slow to even consider that the white perpetrator was a terrorist and a racist (would you believe I’ve even seen the excuse that he had ‘black friends on facebook’?)
I’m going to go further. The people who worship the confederacy — this moral moron had a license plate with a confederate flag — are traitors to the country and even if closeted, are propping up racism. This comment from one of his friends is incredibly oblivious.
“I never heard him say anything, but just he had that kind of Southern pride, I guess some would say. Strong conservative beliefs,” he said. “He made a lot of racist jokes, but you don’t really take them seriously like that. You don’t really think of it like that.”
But now, “the things he said were kind of not joking,” Mullins added.
There’s nothing wrong with being proud of where you come from, and there’s much in the South that’s good. But somehow Southern pride has become a code phrase for being white, resenting the Civil War, and opposing civil rights for non-white people.
This kid didn’t think much of racist jokes, or ‘strong conservative beliefs’, or nostalgia for the Confederacy. He should have.
That’s the whole problem right there. Flying a Confederate flag from the back of your truck ought to be a mark of shame and a sign of potential problems in the same way torturing small animals as a child is.
Go read Charles Pierce.
Really? The “I have black friends” excuse? Extended to fucking facebook “friends”? And of course, the continued unwillingness to call white mass killers “terrorists” (or “thug” even, though that would be minimizing anyway). You couldnt make up this stuff if you tried.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/dylann-roof-and-a-night-of-hate-in-charleston
So how much you want to bet this guy was raised Baptist or some kind of fundamentalist? Odds? What happens to that “attack on faith” deal when the media interviews his neighbors. “He was always so quiet. We had no idea.”
Already some pundits are trying to re-frame this as an assault on Christianity. Or sweep the terroristic, racist nature of what he did under the rug with opining about “mental illness.” We can never seem to address the problem of terrorism committed by white males head-on, nor that of gun violence. There’s always some deflection to bring into play.
>>> But now, “the things he said were kind of not joking,” Mullins added.
Yeah, that’s like what someone said about rape jokes.
*You* know you’re just kidding and you wouldn’t really rape anyone. But someone within earshot is *not* kidding. And that guy? He thinks you’re on his side.
“You’re raping our women and taking over our country”-
Does anyone else get a whiff of misogyny (misogynoir to be exact) in there? It’s like he’s addressing black men, and erasing black women.
Fourteen years into the “war on terror” and racist assholes like this still have no problem getting their hands on murder tools?
Fuck that shit.
Fox News is advising pastors to arm themselves.
Link
So now we know how rightwing pundits will spin this: as an attack on christians — no racism at all.
Tony,
You get double misogyny for the price of one:
black women don’t exist and the our women bit.
You see, “they” are welcome to rape their own women, it’s just our women they should take their hands off.
This is such a horrible and needless tragedy, I don’t even know what to say. It seems very clear that the motivation is racism.
@Tony! at 6,
The shooter speaks as if he “owns” White women, which is definitely sexist. So I guess this evil scumbag is both racist and sexist like so many other bigots. Probably was homophobic too.
Of course they’re not going to acknowledge it’s about race. That would mean acknowledging that racism is still a problem in this country. And they’re not going to call it terrorism, because everyone knows only Muslims can be terrorists. Personally, I’m surprised they didn’t start talking about the criminal records of the murdered parishioners and claim he was just standing his ground.
His glance gives me the shivers.
@ Lynna at 8,
How many people would feel comfortable attending churches where guns were prolific? I know I wouldn’t. I’d just stay home instead. How about less guns for everyone, like other developed countries?
It’s chilling to think he sat with people in the church for an hour before starting to murder them.
My condolences to everyone who lost their family or friends in the shooting.
BBC writes that the officials called it a hate crime.
I see the Daily Beast has updated their farcical claim that he didn’t have a reputation for being racist.
More blather from the rightwing — spinning the attack into an attack on religious liberty:
Link
And amidst all this, South Carolina’s state house is flying a confederate flag. Apparently “still”. So it’s just been there, and everyone was just OK with it?
Living in South Africa, where we have a very definite flag that denotes a horrible, inexcusable period in our country’s history (the very flag this shooter had on his jacket in one of the pictures), I find it mindboggling that something like that is just allowed. To me, that spells a clear endorsement of racism.
Knocked the R.C. Pope right out of the news cycle, didn’t it! Now, which hat should I wear today; tin foil or aluminum.
Ah and given a gun for his 21st birthday. What a wonderful heart warming NRA advert right there.
If hate speech is a warning indicator for potential hate crimes, and if the circulation of hate speech produces new converts for potential violence are we going to talk again about the proper limits of free speech? As well as gun control?
Maybe after we’ve recovered a bit and found out more about this guy. The quote in the title of the post isn’t in any of the news media I read. I thought this post was going to be about Donald Trump. Did you know he said something rather similar about Mexicans? How dangerous do you think that is? (not a rhetorical question)
More dunderheaded blather from the rightwing, this time connecting the shooting to the evil of abortion rights:
Link
President Obama expressed sadness, and he also asked for a discussion of gun control, and for a reality check of some kind:
Pen,
I absolutely think that a country that takes human rights seriously should have hate speech laws.
Well, that didn’t long. I was wondering which the fundy freaks would blame first: abortion or gay marriage. I knew it was coming but just not how soon it would appear. They never disappoint, do they?
Fox News people are advising black pastors and black men to arm themselves so they can be safe in church? Christians are being persecuted religiously and so must arm themselves? That’s a lot of concentrated spin doctoring.
One more example of cluelessness in response to the shooting:
Link
There absolutely is if we take “proud” literally; but I digress. I like the picture.
Wow! That means they’re less racist now than in the 1960s! *slow clap*
Kind of not joking. Even in the wake of horrific murder, we get a “kind of…”. There’s no clarity, no definition, no condemnation. That “kind of” denotes the heavy hesitancy to label any white person a racist, no matter their ideas, attitudes, or actions.
Lynna @ 26 quoted Barack Obama. “[I]nnocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.”
So how long before the wingnuts start calling this a false flag operation so Obama can take your guns. There are still people convinced that Sandy Hook never happened…
What fool gave this punk a gun instead of a banjo and a bridge?
When I first heard about the shootings, I tossed this on the Drum:
Cue the ‘it was an isolated incident that has nothing to do with gun culture, it is not terrorism because [fill in the blank], we need more guns so this will not happen, he was crazy so we don’t have to look at society, this was the liberal’s/Obama’s/victim’s/atheist’s/abortion doctor’s/secularist’s fault’ from the national media, the older-conservative-white-rich-man-talking-head, and any conservative who wants to make money or get votes.
And from quotes here, and on the ‘Look at all the white people’ thread. Depressing how many of my predictions are already coming true.
Maybe cynic is a snynonym for realist?
Chrisv @ 35:
Just because you’re expressing bigotry from the other side doesn’t make it less bigoted. I’m pretty sure you could come up with a substantial, non-biased comment if you try.
chrisv #35
Please explain what you mean by this.
Proof once again that the terrorists who pose the greatest danger to America are white Christians.
What do you mean “has become”? Seems like it always was about those things.
re Pen @23:
I read this question as a disguised attack on PZ for always speaking against ~lotsastuff~. That speaking against them is “hate speech” and is preluding violence.
I know I’m being overly defensive, correct me. [not rhetoric]
From Lynna’s link @8:
Let’s reinforce restrictive gender roles while advocating for guns. Do the men not deserve protection too?
Another thing on the “kind of not joking”, with the emphasis on joking this time. This also comes up in cases of harassment and sexual assault too. When someone is often making ‘jokes’ which are based on racism, or rape, or some other nasty bias, it’s not so much joking as it is seeking approval for repugnant attitudes, and if people don’t speak out about this when it happens, that person is receiving tacit approval for those repugnant attitudes. We all have to do a whole lot better on this.
chrisv
His dad gifted him a .45 calibre gun recently.
Six Victims From Charleston Shooting Identified, please let’s take a moment for them, too.
Ogvorbis @36, I think you may have left out the gun-rights activist explanation: the church was a gun-free zone, and therefore people died. Actually, the church was not a legally-mandated gun-free zone, but Second Amendment activists are claiming it was.
The law says: ” A permit issued pursuant to this section does not authorize a permit holder to carry a concealable weapon into a: […] (8) church or other established religious sanctuary unless express permission is given by the appropriate church official or governing body […]” That’s a loophole big enough for any number of automatic weapons in churches.
Link
backupbob @45:
That’s a possibility.
It’s also possible he wanted a survivor to tell others what happened as a warning. He was sending a message to the black community that there are people like him out there and they wish us harm. Moreover, if he was willing to waltz into a church, where else are like-minded individuals willing to walk into?
Hmm, I wonder if the killer chose that specific church because of its importance to the community. Given that churches are very important in the African-American community a strike at an historically important church could be seen as a blow the heart of the community.
rq:
Seems to me at least four of those six were women. So much for the “you’re raping our women”.
Moggie
Of the 9 victims, 6 are women, 3 are men. Could just be an accident of bible-study demographics, maybe not. Still. Another tick against ‘erasure of black women’.
And to further tie it in to the OP, apparently that confederate flag in front of the state house was flying full staff while the others were at half staff this morning.
http://jezebel.com/is-south-carolina-just-gonna-fly-that-confederate-flag-1712235994
Tony
All the men are black, all the women are white. But before we delve into how it’s sexist against white women, let’s not forget that the construction of “white womanhood” is part and parcel of white supremacy.
Gen
Guess what flag he wore as a patch on his jacket.
+++
Re: hate speech laws. Yes, please. After WWII Germany implemented a simple rule: You don’t get to use open society to abolish open society. Some things are off limit.
I also don’T think that every person who makes racist jokes is going to shoot black people. But every time this is going unnoticed a message is sent. Nobody reacted when he told those jokes when he was 14, 16, 18, 20. He had many, many years of white tolerance and white acceptance. He was not born a white supremacist mass murderer. He became one. He became on in a climate where he made racist statements and everybody seemed to agree with him.
Giliell, 52 Ugh, I know. I talked about it at 20. It’s absolutely chilling and sickening.
Sounds like he thinks this guy was clearly a defective human being, and from the evidence, it sounds spot on. What do *you* think he meant? And what [@37 Caine] is bigoted about that?
@19 RE Santorum – that has to be the most disgusting political use of a tragedy ever. Ricky deserves all the Googled misery he gets.
Gen
Sorry, I got you wrong
scienceavenger
No please stop that. Or better, please explain what you mean by “defective human being”? Apparently yestrday morning nobody thought there was anything wrong with him.
@47 I’d have thought gun-free zone arguments would have stopped after the Fort Hood shooting. Word is they have a few weapons there.
@57 scienceavenger, Fort Hood does not allow soldiers to carry weapons freely around base. “Here are the rules on carrying firearms on Fort Hood”
That’s the problem isn’t it, running around with his stars and bars, and spitting out his racist jokes, just like commenter 52 above said. Wait that’s you. Then why are you asking, if you are from the south, you know how normalized this shit is.
“Defective human being” – dumbass. Mentally challenged. Warped view of the world. Obviously racist as fuck. Why do so many of you seem to have trouble understanding the meaning, seemed pretty clear to me.
Gen:
I want to know who was responsible for that. I can’t see that being accidental. Somebody has the responsibility of issuing instructions to lower the flags, and it’s somebody’s job to go and do it. Do you think this time they just sort of accidentally forgot the racist traitorous one? No, I reckon that was a conscious decision, and I want to hear them justify it.
Please don’t make this about gun-free zones. Please let’s talk about the racism.
Oh and the gun was gifted to the shooter by his own dad. So no background checks, etc. That’s what loose gun laws get you, armed and angry racists killing black people. So yeah, let’s talk about what made him a racist person.
scienceavenger #54
What I think chrisv meant is not relevant.
In the interest of non-jerking knees, I asked for an explanation.
1) Mental illness is not racism.
2) Racism is not a mental illness.
(As borrowed from twitter.)
White supremacy isn’t a mental illness. It’s a cultural condition. But it does not make one mentally challenged, mentally ill, or otherwise ‘defective’ as a human being.
Human beings, perfectly functional ones, are fully capable of doing great evil and of committing heinous crimes.
Let’s focus on what helped him foster such hate, the climate in which he grew up in, the jokes other white people let slide.
And to be clear (to borrow from POTUS), these are not issues exclusive to the USAmerican south. The USAmerican north is rife with racism, and it’s merely a luck of geography that this kind of shooting occurred where it did, latitudinally. Because his kind of normal is certainly normal.
All nine victims have been identified by the coroner.
… And they still head the article with the fucking face of the shooter.
I really have nothing to add to this thread except that I want to voice my complete support of everything PZ said. I have, for decades, believed that those who display or give reverence to the Confederate flag are anti-American and racists.
scienceavenger #59
You are not new here but you may have missed the many discussions we’ve had decrying attempts to equate mental illness and other issues with racism.
Don’t start another one because it distracts from the main issue.
… And because it’s buried in the article:
Shooters of color are called ‘terrorists’ and ‘thugs.’ Why are white shooters called ‘mentally ill’?
scienceavenger
1. I am not from the “South” my “South” is on a different continent.
2. If you got from my comment that normalised racism isn’t the problem then you git me wrong. I apolgise for the confusion. Normalised unchallenged racism is exactly what is wrong and what allowed this guy to further radicalise.
Being mentally challenged is not the same as being a mass murderer. It is pretty ableist to imply this, same as “mental illness” when there is absolutly no evidence that this was the case and also no causative link.
Actually, I think I understood you pretty well. In the spirit of the recent discussions about the climate here on Pharyngula I decided to leave room for doubt and ask you for clarification.
You’re wrong. You’re horribly wrong. This isn’t the story of a lone “defective” guy who decided to murder 9 people out of the blue. It’s the story of white supremacy and racism. The statement quoted in the OP is as old as the history of slavery, painting black men as sexually threatening brutes who savage white women.
@48 from what I read the shooter lived 100 miles from that church, and it’s a church where MLK spoke, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he chose it with intent to strike at the heart of the black community.
scienceavenger @54:
Asking for clarity isn’t a bad thing.
Also, I really don’t like the phrasing “defective human being”. Too much like othering. The attitudes of the shooter are shared by many, many people out there. None of them are “defective human beings”. They’re racist (and likely sexist, along with some other -ists)
sumdum
That church has so much black history attached to it in addition to MLK speaking there, that it is difficult for me to doubt that he specifically chose it as another layer to his message.
@rq at 69,
Even Black victims are called thugs by the media. Look what happened to Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, etc. in the media. Megan Kelly even claimed that the 15-year old girl who was brutalized by that police officer in McKinney “was no saint”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAtT1KHwnT4
But whenever a White person commits a horrific crime, we’re supposed to wonder if they were mentally ill as if that would excuse their behavior. Had Andreas Lubitz been Muslim or Black, would the media have discussed his mental state? Doubt it.
The media (Fox in particular) is turning this into an “attack on Christians,” not a racial attack.
No, it’s an attack of “secularism” on traditional Christian values.
They are removing race as a factor.
kayden
The label ‘thug’ is so rarely applied to white people that it is practically synonymous with the n-word.
White perpetrators are always isolated incidents with [issues]. Someone needs to connect the dots.
Jafafa Hots
I feel like they’re this close to getting it.
Sadly, they won’t.
Today, the US Supreme Court ruled in a case brought by some group called the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who were suing the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles for refusing to issue license plates with the confederate flag. The good news is they lost. The bad news is it was only a 5-4 vote, meaning just one more Republican on the court and it likely would have been decided the other way. Also, I suppose it’s progress that Texas had refused to issue the license plates in the first place.
Apparently he even anounced he’d do something like this. And they gave him a gun…
rq, don’t kid yourself.
THEY get it, but they are deliberately steering their viewers in the wrong direction to make sure their viewers won’t get it.
Jafafa Hots:
I wonder why a resident of Columbia had to travel all the way to Charleston to make an “attack on Christians”? Christians must be a lot rarer in South Carolina than I thought.
Jafafa Hots
You’re right, of course. :(
Is there a racism denial Bingo card?
Lindsey Graham downplays race after black church shooting: ‘People looking for christians to kill them’
Dear Mr. Graham-
Why is he called a ‘disturbed young man’, rather than a ‘brutal thug’? Why the sympathetic terminology?
It’s not a window into the soul of South Carolina?! Certainly not *all* of the residents of South Carolina, but a fair chunk of them. After all, this is a state where (as Gen pointed out @20) a Confederate flag still flies at the state house.
We figured that out the minute you downplayed racism as one of Roof’s motivations.
Oooh, just what we need in this discussion-armchair mental health diagnoses or speculations from people completely unqualified to judge.
Just had to put that Christian martyrdom complex on display, eh?
You can add Lindsay Graham to the “He probably shot them because they were Christians” crowd. Interestingly his niece went to school with Roof, which he uses to imply Roof is mentally ill, not the product of racism in South Carolina culture.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/lindsey-graham-downplays-race-after-black-church-shooting-people-looking-for-christians-to-kill-them/
Lynna @47:
I thought I had that covered with:
but my writing sucks right now.
Well, for a while.
Just heard a clip from “Fox and Friends” – not only are they calling it an attack on “faith” etc., they are actively criticizing anyone who is “jumping to conclusions” and suggesting race was a factor… Elizabeth Hasselbeck is worried about how she can feel safe in her church… and of course the answer is pastors with guns.
But they are actively criticizing the idea that there was a race motive.
So, I finally figured out what bothers me about this line of argument.
“Humanity” has had an aspirational as well as a purely denotative sense basically forever. There are implications of being human, responsibilities to live up to, implied by it, and referring to a violent racist as “defective” may be problematic for historical reasons but “failure as a human being” is pretty accurate.
Insisting that it can only possibly be used to mean a literal member of the species Homo Sapiens… it’s a “Dictionary Human” Argument.
Words fail me:
So I guess we all now know where the Governor’s priorities lie…
Tony
Ask and you shall be given
@ Tacitus at 88,
“she didn’t believe the flag presented an image problem for the state because she never had ‘one conversation with a single CEO about the Confederate flag.'”
What does that even mean? Blacks have been very vocal about wanting the confederate flag taken down. Do they not matter? Wow. Just wow.
Kayden #90
None of the rich white men she spoke to thought there was a problem.
Therefore no problem.
The end.
Well, not quite the end. Since they were all CEO’s, the were also speaking for their corporations. Corporations are also people, so it was actually double the number of people who were ok with it.
@41 – slithey tothe
I’m going to speculate that you don’t know that this is yet another of those issues (like gun control) where the European consensus is broadly different from the American one as are European laws. It’s a distinction that goes way, way beyond anything PZ may do or say. Also there’s no reason you should know that I’ve been involved in debates on the subject regularly all over FTB for a long time, tentatively advocating for the European position.
@Moggie, #49:
(quoting rq)
So, yeah. I totally get where you’re coming from. And the point that I think you’re attempting to make is completely valid.
However, when you write tersely and leave so much implied, you rely on societal expectations, some of them wrong and harmful, to complete your point.
in this case, you’re relying on the idea that women never rape. Don’t ever use that as part of your argument, please? I don’t doubt that Roof believed that, and that therefore from Roof’s perspective that statement doesn’t make any sense as a motive for killing women (without further extensions, such as the Black women giving birth to Black boys).
But to use it the way that you did, relying on it as a shared social understanding, you only make it seem that Roof was actually right about that. And like so many other things, this is a point on which he was horribly wrong.
@ scienceavenger #59
A good default assumption for this blog is that nobody is from wherever you are, they’re quite likely not even from the same continent and they have no idea how normalized any particular shit may be wherever you are.
So, just to shock the Americans who know what the symbol means: last week in Britain’s most multi-racial district, the holiday funfair was flying a confederate flag over one of the rides. 99% or people here see it as something pretty that’s associated with the USA. My American husband said WTF, but I think he’s the exception.
Giliell @89:
Thanks. I don’t have a bingo-yet. I probably will in the immediate future.
People in Alberta fly the Confederate flag from their trucks as an expression of “Yee-haw cowboy” culture. If they have any political feelings about it at all, it’s a feeling of “local government standing up to a far-away capital that doesn’t understand or respect our way of life” type crap, or just “standing up to big government”.
This is horrible and tragic, and made even worse by the bigots trying to spin the whole thing as an evil secularist attack on Christianity.
My secular humanist atheist thoughts are with the victims and their families.
@ Tony and others re: historicity.
I found this to be a pretty good (though incomplete) summary. This is a historical black church with a fuckload of history and activism.
There is no chance he targeted this church on accident. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we see a manifesto a la Brevik, and since he wasn’t gunned down by police (unusual!), I’m sure he’ll be making us all sick by explaining his “reasons” to the media.
P.S. I only skimmed comments, mainly due to early coverage of this making me want to throw up (Jebus, Fox and Friends…), so if someone’s posted similarly, apologies for not catching it.
@Nitirc Acid (96)–But isn’t Harper a small-government, pro-local conservative politician from Alberta? How do they expect to get a more sympathetic ear than his?
One of the more pernicious, long-lived (and false) ideas about the Lost Cause is that “none of this is political” or that any political aspects are simply related to a moot issue (Southern independence), not ongoing racial politics.
@backupbob- well, you see none of those things were really threats. Up until yesterday, he was just a Responsible Gun Owner who wouldn’t do anything like that. He was just talking, which is absolutely not threatening at all and doesn’t indicate any possibility of actually acting on the things he was saying. Nope, can’t prove a thing.
After reading about this today, the key points appear to be
1) the church was targeted since it was a historic church for blacks
2) the pastor, also a state senator, was his big target, since the senator was effect, and black.
3) Roof hopes his actions will lead to further actions a la Timothy McVeigh and his bomb in OKC.
I just hope this fizzles for Roof like the OKC bombing did for McVeigh. There shouldn’t be more deaths.
I just got off my plane. The woman in the seat next to mine was watching MSNBC, and they had a segment where they whimpered about all the mass murders in “places of worship”. On Twitter, some guy is trying to tell me that because the shootings were in a church, the shooter must have been an atheist. Dave Futrelle reports that that repellent snotweasel, Dean Esmay, is blaming the feminists.
Why is it so hard to see the obvious? This was a racist crime in a racist country swimming in guns.
Let me tell you who else was regarded as a “quiet strange kid” in his youth: me.
I don’t think I was mentally ill. I also wasn’t interested in murdering anyone.
Jim Atkins said:
Microraptor said:
I’d like to remind folks that a white atheist killed three young Muslims in North Carolina only a few months ago. A white atheist also organized a protest of hundreds of armed people at a mosque in Phoenix.
Racism doesn’t limit itself to a single faith, god, or lack thereof.
Also, there’s an extremely long history of white people focusing racist violence on black Christian churches. Those churches have served as centers of political and social organizing against white racism for ages. That’s why they tend to be targeted by racist violence.
So, can we try to keep this focused on the actual issue at hand: racism? There’s plenty of opportunity out there to critique religion for its failings but this isn’t the proper context, especially given the history of black churches and white violence… and especially given that there are plenty of racist atheists in the world.
Plus, consider the widespread state violence committed against black people which occurs on a daily basis: police shootings, disproportionate incarceration, racial profiling, etc. Religion isn’t the source of racist laws, racist policing, racist institutions, and racist behavior. This horrible man’s actions are one example of a general state of terror that black people and other people of color have to endure on a daily basis, coming from all angles. Church attendance is hardly the larger story behind this widespread social pattern.
PZ
Yes but did you sport the super conservative pudding basin hair cut? At my school they were considered the real weirdos.
/bad memories
And now, as I read further down the comment thread, I see that conservatives are (similarly) blaming atheism for the shootings. That’s terribly ironic and the same thing I said in last four paragraphs of my post above applies equally well to conservatives’ blaming atheism.
Feh.
NO ONE HAS SEEN THE HAIRCUT CONNECTION YET!
I saw some on twitter questioning whether or not the suspect was even white, because he looked you know , a little mixed. Seriously.
I believe this refers to two scenes in the movie Deliverance. In one scene one of the movies protagonists has a musical duel with a kid playing a banjo he is playing a guitar. The result is the instrumental piece Dueling Banjos. Later in the movie the protagonists see the kid with his banjo on a bridge.
The Dueling Banjo scene can be found on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpL0Q2OSRwQ.
So I’m listening to TWiBPrime’s coverage of this, and Aaron Rand Freeman (one of the hosts) talked about how, in order to protect himself, he no longer sees any reason to not protect himself against racism from white people by wondering, and generally not feeling immediately safe around white people. I agree with him 100%.
Schroedinger’s Racist
This is a thing that we HAVE to deal with, now. It’s real. I already fully expect women to not be sure right off the bat of me as a dude. I have no problem expecting the same from people of color and black people especially.
This is where we fucking are in this country. Nothing’s changed. We can end segregation, we can elect a half-black man as president… none of that changes shit.
We still. Live. In. A. White. Supremacy.
And at this point, my response to anyone saying otherwise is to punch them in the jaw, because fuck them and their racist asses.
I mean… and in this day and age, black people are still fucking told to “be peaceful”.
Why? What have we white fucks ever done to make them feel safe enough to be “peaceful”? It’s we white people who need to “be peaceful”.
Also, everyone needs to listen to TWiBPrime.
Oh, so when the police said they were looking for the guy with a truck with a “distinctive” license plate, they just didn’t want to say “confederate”. What a surprise.
timberwraith @105:
While all of what you say is true, if you look at the many examples of terrorism in the United States over the last few decades, many, many of them were committed by Right Wing Christian extremists:
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/publications/terror-from-the-right
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/12/04/3599271/austin-shooter-christian-extremism/
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/01/americas-10-worst-terror-attacks-by-christian-fundamentalist-and-far-right-extremists/
http://www.ifyouonlynews.com/religion/christian-terror-12-examples-of-terrorism-from-the-right/
And of course there is a strong connection between right-wing extremism and the Christian Identity Movement.
With so many terrorist acts being committed by Right Wing Christian extremists in the US, I fully understand why people might suspect that Dylann Roof’s religious beliefs played a role in his murderous actions.
I don’t see anyone dismissing the racism at the heart of Roof’s actions. But racism may not be the only motive at the heart of Roof’s deadly actions. Religious beliefs have played a role in enough acts of terror in the United States for this to be a reasonable topic to discuss in this situation.
Even I’m loathe to let any other narrative other than the one around racism slip in to this. We know he was white and was a racist. I haven’t seen anything yet confirm his religious identity other than the fact that he sat in the church for an hour before doing this.
And even if his religious identity played a roll, racism is still not only the main motive, but the motive he expressed rather directly. He didn’t say anything about God or Jesus or being on a holy mission or whatever. Everything he said… his whole statement, was pure racism, and that was it.
So for all I know, he could have been an atheist. Sure, odds are he was a Christian, given where he lived, but there’s zero evidence that religion had anything to do with what he did right now. It might have been the furthest thing from his mind. Hell… he might have even resigned himself to an eternity of Hell for this. We don’t know. All we know is that he was a White Supremacist and a terrorist. His religion hasn’t entered the picture yet, and even if or when it does, it still doesn’t change the fact that his stated motive was purely racist.
@ #78 eeyore wrote, about the Texas confederate flag case:
You can never tell. The deciding vote, to go along with Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan, was Clarence Thomas.
I’ve thought a lot about this issue. We need words to describe the brains and minds of people who have effectively broken them in the context of functioning in society. Brains and minds that are basically fine from the standpoint of hardware, but got messed up in how they function from culture and choice. Racists are racist because of role-models and choices and they are just as human as the rest of us. Pointing at bridges and banjos is a convenient means of refusing to stare at human awfulness and know it for what it is.
The technical terms don’t work right now because society loves to have what is basically historically inspired scape-goating as slang. It’s similar to the problem that prevents the public and media from talking about Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Ethel Lance, Susie Jackson, Depayne Middleton, Mira Thompson and Daniel Simmons. The media and society find shoving a killer and claims of mental illness in our faces more interesting because the dangerous person is sensational, the mental illness claim makes whites feel better, and we don’t have to think about dead black people.
In the case of words like idiot, moron and similar they got strength because they used to be actual diagnoses and it was a convenient way to paint a label somewhere. The fact that they are no longer actual diagnosed conditions helps and so I don’t complain as much as I could (like I would psychopath or someone saying another person’s argument was ” schizophrenic “), but using them hides the truth from the person who uses them. The real enemy is the cultural beliefs and behaviors that create this situation. The real enemy the social isolation that lets this sort of thing become an echo chamber.
And the real enemy is also the beliefs and behaviors that let us hide the problem from ourselves.
Tabby Lavalamp wrote:
Ask, and you shall receive: http://www.infowars.com/false-flag-dylann-roofs-barely-used-facebook-page-likely-created-in-2015/
ck, the Irate Lump @ #117:
There’s a video at that link. I know what sources that guy is using, because I want to see directly how he’s manipulating them to support his racist agenda.
Oh and jokes? Fuck anyone using the “just joking” excuse in any context. I’ve been looking into the psychology of humor and humor transforms emotions.
*More or less intense.
*One emotion into another.
Of particular note here is that very often (I would say most often in the case of racist, sexist and gendered jokes) humor transforms anger, fear and disgust. So when I see someone making those kinds of jokes I immediately start looking to see which of them the person is trying to ease. Are they trying to ease their disgust? Calm their fears? Hide their anger? It also attempts to look for and create camaraderie though social pressure.
With enough practice you can learn to spot which one and drop a “so how long have you been afraid of black people?” “How long have you found people speaking Spanish disgusting?”. A paper like this, some other background material and some practice at dissecting a joke and there are many ways that situation can be twisted. No joke is “just a joke”. Not even satire. They are often social weapons, which explains the social mess.
I’m not saying that everyone is in a social position where they can actually do something like this. But the tools are there. No racist should get to salve their feelings when they need to be confronted and dealt with, by themselves if possible, by society if necessary.
Nate @114:
Given his white supremacist leanings
combined with his Confederate license plate, I think it’s reasonable to suspect that he might have ties to a Christian extremist group. Note-I’m not saying he definitely is, but there are enough red flags that point to the possibility that Roof was a Christian extremist of some sort.
Incidentally, the SPLC has identified at least 19 hate groups based in South Carolina.
NateHevens. He who hates straight, white, cis-gendered, able-bodied men (not really) wrote:
You watched the video? I was disgusted enough with the article that I didn’t bother. I did see some of the comments were surprisingly reasonable with some saying things to the effect that labeling this false flag is silly because a racist asshole shooting people isn’t surprising. It’s a low bar to be sure, but it is infowars, where no conspiracy is too far fetched.
Watch out, this will get ugly. These are all quotes from Mike Adams. Probably you could have predicted this.
“this attack fits all the signs of a deliberate plot designed to ignite a race war in America.”
”
• The attack was carried out by a white man. (Or at least a man who appeared to have white skin. These days, we don’t actually know whether this man “self identifies” as white or possibly another race, so we can’t be sure until we ask him… or her.)”
…
“Watch for the media to somehow tie this into Rachel Dolezal and the newly-viral issue of “race self-identity.””
That’s castle bravo grade projection there.
“Watch for law enforcement authorities to “discover” and announce that the guy has visited Infowars.com and is an Alex Jones fan. ”
http://web.archive.org/web/20150619014558/http://www.naturalnews.com/050115_church_shooting_Charleston_race_war.html
An NRA spokesperson has blamed Pastor Pinckney for his and the others’ deaths, because as state senator, Pinckney was for gun control.
The sickness in American culture is endless.
A lot of restraint on Facebook today, so tempted to go off this person:
So I was tempted sorely tempted, but I said:
I am sorry Christine no. Your premise is flawed. The fact that he took them by surprise doesn’t mean that it wasn’t terrorism. Otherwise why do people stick around other than they didn’t know for suicide bombings which take people by surprise?
Someone else succumbed, and I am sure that was more gratifying than edifying:
Don’t ask me why she formed that conclusion. I don’t know.
70% of mass shooters are white men but only 30% of the US is white & male:
https://youtu.be/phot_KGMJF4
WHAT HAIRCUT CONNECTION?
pacal #110
I know what chrisv was referring to.
I am confident that many or most others in the thread also caught the reference.
I wanted an explanation of why chrisv made that reference.
I agree with NateHavens’ # 114.
It is useless and probably counterproductive to speculate about the killer’s religious leanings. It distracts from the racism angle and it plays into Christians versus atheists sniping at each other which ones are more murderous in a case where religion is at this point an unknown factor.
After the killer’s religion is revealed, there will be enough useless “told you sos”, no need to jump ahead.
The so far known contributing factor, a major contributing factor : racism.
Sorry, NateHevens
@ Beatrice:
Adding to your excellent comment, I’ll merely repeat what others have pointed out, and add proprietary sexism. Most certainly a lesser contributing factor, and certainly implicit/unconscious compared to racism, as far as I can tell, but very definitely present. Again, as has already been pointed out.
But yeah, add me to the crowd asserting that speculation about religious motivations on the extremely limited evidence so far is pointless, and even counterproductive. Others’ mileage may vary.
backupbob
I don’t know, it’s tricky to weed out people who are liable to commit the atrocities they loudly praise from the people who won’t do that without enough of a social push (someone willing to commit a mass murder or terrorist attack on their own versus someone with the exact same views who would rather wait for a convenient Hitler (sorry)).
If his place of living is as racist as it seems apparent from all the reports I read about racism and violence in (parts of) the US, then people like him must be a dime a dozen (like him in the sense of their views on non-white people). And yet the others will go through their whole lives doing “just ” smaller, more socially acceptable acts of racism. Of course, he could be an exemption, where his behavior was clearly dangerous, but what we hear now can also be results of hindsight. Oh yeah, now that I think about it, when we were discussing how worthless black people are, he was especially vehement about that… things like that
Tony
Well, folks on Twitter say they have one if you can safely assume that he loved pizza cause who doesn’t?
Pen
Similar in Germany. But I think it also makes an argument about the USA: The proud racist heritage has become so ingrained that people from outside see it as part of US American identity.
+++
Who else, who else…
+++
Yeah, it was everything but racism. Apparently, wearing racist regalia, ranting loudly against black people, commiting a premediated and anounced act of mass murder against black people at a place that is deeply linked with the civil rights movement does not make you racist. In that case, sure, racism is over. Because by now even if somebody acts with all the villainy that’s usually “requested” as proof of racism, it isn’t.
Black people are denied their identity and suffering even in death.
+++
Caroline
Saw that, too. My eyes rolled so hard, I tore a muscle I think…
What Beatrice said. People share all kinds of fantasies with their friends, and sometimes we just think those people are a little weird. Most times they do nothing. Unfortunately Roof did act on his fantasies. People around him probably knew he was deeply racist (probably a little more racist than they were comfortable with themselves), but I doubt they recognized him as dangerous rather than, just, you know, weird. And a little too racist. And he was 21, which means he probably got the benefit of youth – ‘he’ll go to college and he’ll learn and he’ll change’.
Fucking 21, though, how do you learn to hate so bad, so young?
Giliell 132
That is very powerful and very true.
I know I’m hammering on and on about the flag issue, but there are two reasons for that. The first is that I’m absolutely sickened that there are people out there who… fetishize? Is that the right word? Who look up to the atrocities of Apartheid and think “boy, that sure was a great time and a good idea”. I mean, make no mistake, there are certainly many of those here in South Africa to my great dismay, white people who just cling to the past as some sort of Golden Age for the White Man and can’t see past their own benefit to the blood and tears and sweat and lives lost and slavery that actually bought them that unearned wealth. But that there are other people out there in the wider world, away from the toxic, self-reinforcing far right wing circles here in South Africa, who don’t look at that flag, at that time and go “Never again”… that’s just… I don’t even know how to describe how sickened and devastating that is to me.
The other thing is, as we privileged whites in South Africa had to learn (and once again, make no mistake, very far from everyone here actually learned this, once again to my great frustration and dismay and disgust), that symbols matter. When you fly a certain flag, when you sing a certain anthem associated with a certain time and place, you’re saying that you identify positively with that time and that place. You’re basically saying ‘yeah, I’m fine with, nay proud of the things that were done under the auspices of this flag’. When that time and that place is as toxic and disgusting as Apartheid South Africa or the Antebellum/Civil War South, how can it not be see as an explicit endorsement of racism, segregation and white supremacy? I mean, what else is there to be proud of, that isn’t covered by the new flag/anthem?
I’m clearly in the minority thinking there’s a strong possibility that Dylann Storm Roof is a religious extremist. I know there isn’t any proof (and everything on him-the flags of South Africa and Rhodesia on his jacket; his espousing white supremacist ideology-is circumstantial at best), so I’ll shut up.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- @132
See it not so often in Oz, but whenever I do, I see it as a gun-nut identifier. Unfortunately, that more or less automatically also includes racism.
Gen
This.
To tie it back to the Confederate flag and identity: If the outside world (who might not understand the symbols perfectly) realises that this shit is part of your culture and identity, you have a problem. At the risk of Godwining this: If the world thought that flying Swastika flags and the “Reichskriegsflagge” (black white red,with an eagle, official German flag during the Nazi eara when displayed without the eagle) were normal parts of German culture so that they’d fly them at the Beijing Oktoberfest, it would greatly worry me. Scrap that, it would probably make me panic.
Tony
I think there’s a good probability that he is, since racism, white supremacy and right wing christianity are deeply linked, but I also think that it’s not necessarily the case.
More background on Dylann Roof-
What we know about South Carolina shooting suspect Dylann Roof:
Dylann Roof’s family says Charleston shooting suspect is introverted:
More still-
Roommate says Charleston suspect planned shooting for six months:
Tony
I don’t think you’re a minority, it’s just not the most-visible thing he is that the media refuses to acknowledge. As Giliell says, I’m pretty sure he’s also a religious extremist (his sexist/misogynist views are a small bit of evidence for that), but it’s the racism that big-name media keep denying. (I think he might be conservative-atheist, but… that’s pure speculation.)
Not reading anything more on his background, though. Don’t want to hear how he was so quiet and withdrawn and everybody noticed his racism but nobody ever, ever, ever did anything.
He killed nine people for racist reasons. Stop looking at him, start looking at the cultural background in which he grew up.
rq @140:
I wonder how much they’ll be able to turn up, especially since his family doesn’t seem very forthcoming with information.
Clarification on my 140:
I don’t want to hear about his character anymore, but I do want to know about his reasons. Media seem afraid to talk about those honestly.
Tony
They don’t need his family to get the cultural context in which he grew up.
rq
One thing is that if there are known religious ties then the media would have to stop the “attack on faith” narrative.
Also, I’m with you. i’m sick and tired of how he’s constantly humanised and shit but none of his victims get that airtime.
I’m Australian, but I know the history of the Confederacy and the racist, proslavery, wannabe-aristocratic culture behind it. I know this, so there’s sure as hell no excuse for anyone who grew up in the actual states that fought the Civil War to not know this. (I’m not claiming Australia is superior in this regard — we have plenty of people who live in a state of wilful ignorance about our own history.) Anyone who slaps a Confederate flag on anything as a matter of pride is contemptible. Southerners can still take plenty of pride from history — it’s just that they should be celebrating people like MLK and Harper Lee and Katherine Ann Porter and any number of great musicians and artists and antislavery activists. What I’m saying is, people can find plenty of historical Southerners worthy of respect without latching onto racist slaveholding warmongers, which suggests to me that the real thing behind Southern pride is not the southernness but the racism, slaveholding, and warmongering.
By which I mean (a) his family is allowed to not give interviews if they don’t want to (at least not now, not immediately) and (b) so many other things can help paint a portrait of his views – Roof himself, for one, but he probably had a computer, some kind of friends (one of which… well… confederate fan there too), etc. The white supremacy that he indulged in is so much more than just his family.
I like chrislawson‘s point about southern pride, too – so much more to it than the confederate flag, and yet somehow it’s the confederate flag that is essential to ‘southern pride’.
PZ
Well it appears to have speeded his arrest.
Ta-Nehisi Coates on the confederate flag. Read it.
You know what I don’t get? Articles on the shooting that put up a photo of Roof right under (or above) the headline, rather than any one (or more) of the victims, or even the church where it happened. I really, really don’t get that.
rq
That’S redundant. That it should be read is implied in Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote it.
Giliell
Ha. :)
So, the dangerous rampaging murderer has NOT been killed?
Oh right. White.
While it is sensible to assume that the guy is Christian, I would be inclined to think that religion doesn’t have much significance in this case, if not to reinforce his sense of identity.
The victims, in short:
Here are the nine victims in the #CharlestonShooting RIP, in photos.
We remember you. #CharlestonShooting – a list of the victims’ names, ages, occupations.
Here’s an interesting article about the connection between the US right and white supremacist regimes in Africa
Slightly long on the victims, from the Washington Post:
Remembering the Charleston church shooting victims.
Why the Charlston shooting was not a “hate crime
Good exploration of that term
To Gilliell at #132:
” Black people are denied their identity and suffering even in death.”
This is by no means new. An analogy I’m familiar with is the refusal by the Soviet Union to identify Russian victims of the Holocaust as Jewish. They were identified merely as Soviet citizens, thus at the same time erasing their Jewishness and increasing the number of “Soviet” victims. I think East Germany and Poland did the same thing, but about that I’m not sure.
There’s at least one good thing coming out of this: thanks to this idiot’s choice of targets, the history of that church, and its place in the anti-slavery movement, are now front page news (on NPR at least). And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only white guy who’s now hearing about that history, in some detail, for the first time.
I was pleased to see Stewart’s reaction to the “event”, on The Daily Show, last night. No outrage, (at FauxNoise), just simple statement and recognition that “keeping Americans safe from terrorists” is misdirected. He then followed it with no mocking of other news, nor other comedy bits, just directly into the interview with Mahala, the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize lauriat. And her work to just speak simple statements to powerful people, and encourage regular kids to do the best they want and to ‘go for it’. No big huge idealistic utopia speeches to “inspire” kids, that adults will just dismiss as “unachievable”. Essentially exemplifying the motto, Big journeys are achieved with little steps.. IOW: to make things better for everyone, make something better for at least one person, then the next, so on and on.
The Confederate flag has unfortunately become associated with rebellion in the good sense in a lot of pop culture. What do a lot of people in their 30s and 40s think of when they see that flag? The Dukes of Hazzard, the title characters of which drove around in an orange Dodge Charger called the General Lee, with a Confederate flag on the roof. And they were the good guys in the story. The show was highly popular for much of its run. And that’s just one example of how the meaning of that flag, support for a racist territory, has been obscured.
Of all the news articles I’ve seen so far covering this, here’s one that isn’t afraid to call things as they are.
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/06/dear-gop-south-carolina-blood-your-hands
That’s nothing. I’ve seen a black man wear a T-shirt with a big confederate flag in it in Berlin (Germany, not Texas). :-S I think the first thing people think of when they see the stars & bars is US motorcycle culture and/or Marlboro freedom.
Typo: on it.
DAvid
Why should a black guy in Germany necessarily know more about the history of that flag than a white guy? Chances are he got the same lousy education as the general population. He’s not automatically better educated on racism than anybody else, just more affected.
“You’re raping our women”
“someone needed to do something about it for the white race”.
No racism here. Move along.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/18/charleston-shooter-black-women-white-women-rape
Fox is encouraging black men to carry guns? Christ. They’re already getting shot by racist cops for Skittles, cell phones and BB guns. Arming them won’t save them from racists murderers. It will only be used as an excuse to kill more black men.
@167 Jackie, not only kill more Black men, but claim they were justified, as an armed Black man is even more of a threat than one with Skittles. Never underestimate the ability of whiteness to find ways to subjugate PoC. If we put half as much effort into fighting climate change, we’d all be flying in driverless solar cars.
You folks are apparently not getting the “real news” from Fucks.
This was a religiously motivated attack against Christians!
Todd Starnes makes that very clear in his article.
It does not identify the congregation as African-American anywhere in the article, obviously that point is irrelevant.
I wouldn’t put too much stock in the specifics of the murderer reloading five times and calmly saying, “I have to do it. You’re raping our women and taking over the country. You have to go.” The story is admittedly hearsay, and too me the reported words sound a bit off, a bit too pat, like something got lost in the retelling. Reloading five times is also surprising, as that seems like an awful lot, and often a killer is stopped while reloading. I don’t think there’s an intention to mislead, just the usual unreliable transmission through us faulty humans.
Not to take anything away from the guy being a horrible racist murderer. It just seems that people are putting a lot of weight on these specific words and the analysis of them. While we may never now for sure, I wouldn’t be surprised if direct testimony from the witnesses paints a different picture.
Or maybe I’m wrong and they’ll confirm that he did and said exactly that.
Regarding the comment Roof made about “raping our women”-for those that don’t know, that racist remark has been around for over 100 years. It’s called the Brute caricature.
Jonah @170:
DO.
NOT.
DO.
THIS.
Not here. Not now. Not ever.
Didn’t say he would. It just really drives the point home that people outside the US tend to have no idea.
Or you could have read comments 79 and 100 and seen that independent evidence leads to the same conclusion anyway.
Jonah Glou #170
I won’t say things I want to say, because charity.
Jaonah Glou #170
So you’re comfortable with calling a black witness a liar? How lovely for you.
ceesays @175:
I wonder if Jonah would have believed this
If a man said it.
The jugde at the hearing apparently declared the terrorist’S family to be victims, too.
White supremacy at its finest.
If a black kid is killed by the cops, the parents of the kid are to blame
If a black man murders 9 black people in cold blood, his parents are victims
Ehm , did not close the tag properly.
+++
Feds are considering it a potential act of terrorism
Did it take them 2 days after the Boston Marathon bombing to think that?
Cas
Yes, he killed more black women than men, but I have a feeling this has more to do with the demographics of who attends bible studies rather than outright misogyny – not that he’s not misogynist, mind, but I think it has more to do with that than some sort of inconsistency in his beliefs.
Plus, black women get erased from practically everything, even victimhood, soo…
Something that just struck me and has me more irritated about this act of terrorism-
So many people in the US claim racism is dead.
They never say when it died, though it’s apparently sometime after the death of MLK, Jr.
They never say how it died, though they’ll hint that MLK, Jr had a big role to play.
They never say who killed it, but they’ll invoke MLK, Jr, while ignoring the fact that he was assassinated.
They never acknowledge that racist beliefs didn’t just “turn off” in the minds of millions of USAmericans in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement.
But they continue to assert that racism is dead. So much so that when people say or do racist things or when racist policies impact PoC-whether it’s cops engaging in police brutality, racial policing practices, racial disparities in the labor or housing market, racial disparities in Hollywood, the sexual violence against African-American, Hispanic, and American Indian women, or the mass incarceration of black and brown people-they claim this shit isn’t racist. That’s infuriating enough on its own, bc it shows a profoundly limited understanding of racism.
But here is a blatant example of racism. Dylann Roof stated his intentions. He wanted to start a race war. He wants segregation back. He wants black people dead.
And yet you have politicians making claims like “we don’t know why he did it”. We have pundits claiming President Obama is to blame for this. We have assholes claiming it was actually the fault of Senator Pinckney for voting against guns. We have so many assholes avoiding the very real, very visible elephant in the room. The elephant that millions of people can see. The elephant that wasn’t quiet and unobtrusive.
The elephant of blatant, naked, unbridled racism. The kind of racism that people talk about as being “dead”. The kind of racism that evokes lynchings by the KKK, the Tulsa Riots of 1921, and D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. This overt racism is what many think of when they talk about racism, because so many people do not acknowledge the existence of structural, systemic, representational, or discursive racism. They only acknowledge behavioral racism.
And yet, here we have a blatant case of behavioral racism and people *STILL* deny it exists!
Fuck. Me!
I work in news.
When the story broke, and for several hours afterwards, we searched Charleston on our wires for images – and we go pictures of Hillary Clinton.
#96, #99.
Alberta has more going on with the Stars and Bars US Confederacy symbol than ‘good ole boy’ Country and Western ‘culture’ identification.
Post-Civil War, many Secessionist backers migrated to the Alberta part of the Northwest Territories rather than remain ‘in the Union’. Racism against brown skin of all hues is alive and well in all corners but especially the rural ones. There’s a white power group holed up in their compound not far from the city of Calgary that’s part malicious bathos and part terrorist to the locals. An intimate was treated to an overhead conversation in a diner near the compound where one ‘intellectual’ was instilling in another the virtues of reading “Mein Kampf”. I can add to that direct testimonials of family racists, some still showing their American immigre roots and some sprouted directly in Canadian manure.
The Stars and Bars in Alberta at least isn’t rebel signage, It’s Rebel signage with the thinnest veneer of manners smeared over it. This might be why so many are hyperventilating at the gain of provincial power here by SOCIALISTS, a regime change of course instigated by ‘urban’ (ear piercing dog whistle) votes.
If there is a prize for clueless and offensive remarks, Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry wins. The tragedy in Charleston where a white man shot nine black people was, according to former Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, an “accident.” The cause was “prescription drugs,” and President Obama should not seize the day to bring up gun control.
Raw Story link
This is the same Rick Perry who says he has some experience with being addlepated thanks to prescription drugs. He blames his worst 2012 presidential debate performance on prescription painkillers.
Other Republican presidential candidates fared badly when questioned about the shooting, but Rick Perry was the prize-winning dunderhead of the bunch. Jeb Bush said he couldn’t figure out if the shooter was racist or not. Mike Huckabee is in the growing group that thinks the shooting would not have happened if more people brought guns to church. Santorum went with the “attack on religious liberty” explanation.
An accident? A fucking accident?
I know the Republicans are competing to see who can be the most willfully ignorant, but that’s just obscene.
Hmm. Given the deeply racist history the south has, the history that particular church has (look into it), this comes across as an apologist white washing. Perhaps I misunderstood. The racist shoe fits ESPECIALLY well in the southern United States, sorry, not sorry because its true.
Johnx, 185:
Why does your argument depend on isolating this action as ESPECIALLY applicable to the American South? It happened in the American South, but why is it so important that you felt the need to object to somebody saying that racism is a problem in other parts of the USA, too?
I mean, it’s just a given. every mile of the USA is steeped in white supremacy. Are you under the impression that black people are not killed for existing above the Mason-Dixon line, or what? What’s going on here? why are you invested in this particular detail?
Tony!
I’m wondering the same thing. I’ve been watching white people go out of their way to isolate this, individualize the shooter to a position of unresponsibility, try to imply that he’s not really white (SERIOUSLY!) and it’s … I don’t even have a word for it., but if I did, that very word would reflect the revulsion, horror, and fear.
I haven’t lost connection with churchgoing black folks. I can read twitter. Churchgoing black folks are afraid to go to church. No matter which church, no matter where it is. It makes me sick. IT doesn’t matter that I’m an atheist, it seems. I’m just gutted by the idea.
johnx @185:
I disagree. The racism at play in the South may have been more overt in some areas than it was in the North, but the entire country was created for the benefit of white people. Socially, politically, and economically the entire country was set up by and for the benefit of white people (using People of Color as labor). This is evidenced *everywhere*. Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Indians-none of these groups got any say in the creation of this country. None of those groups were afforded the opportunity to create laws or hold important offices where they could shape laws. They were literally shut out. As a result of that, even during the Antebellum South, even during the Civil War, even during Reconstruction, even during the height of Jim Crow, racism and the ideology of white supremacy existed throughout this country. It took on many different forms, but make no mistake, there was plenty of racism in the North. It wasn’t just a-or even mostly a-Southern thing.
The racist shoe you speak of fits the entire country.
I’m sure it will come as no surprise to anyone that the false flag and it’s a hoax crowds are already well at work. The “Racism isn’t a problem anymore!” bones thrown to them aren’t enough, they need to believe in imaginary conspiracies to ignore real problems.
@Tony! The Queer Shoop #172
I understand you anger, Tony, but probably Jonah deserves a better explanation.
As far as I can tell he’s a newbie and you don’t know where he’s from.
Unless you believe that he’s a concern troll or has a history of assholeness, in which case I reckon the best thing would be to call him out explicitly on that.
@tkreacher #174
Passive-aggressive charity is no charity.
If you have something to say, FFS say it, it is obvious that Jonah said something stupid and would benefit from understanding why.
@ceesays #175
Wow. Great strawmanning there. How lovely of you.
“Person not accurately recollecting extremely traumatic events” is not the same as “liar”.
Evidence required to show that the recollection is false, and not just claimed to be so by somebody trying to knock down the racism angle. In other words, the witness is charitably presumed to be correct until it is recanted. In which case, Jonah is showing no charity toward the eyewitness.
I actually thought Jonah Glou was saying not to trust the reporters i.e. the journalists.
As opposed to the actual witnesses.
Jonah Glou @ 170,
I suggest that you take five minutes out to consider what you said there.
Hearsay is a third party’s account of what s/he has heard or claims to have heard from someone who was there. It will not be treated as primary evidence in the case.
Witness evidence which is what we are talking about here, is the direct evidence of a person who was there. It will be presented in court.
No amount of if-ing or but-ing about the potential of trauma to distort memory will turn them into the same thing. To even raise the question you would need a detailed knowledge of the people involved and of the whole situation. Do you have that?
From the brief accounts I have read it seems obvious that these nine dead people were prominent citizens, active in their community and with all their marbles – as were the surviving witnesses. So you’d need a good reason to doubt their words: an unchecked bias is not a good reason but it’s the one I suspect you may have.
F.O. @190:
There has been a wealth of coverage on this story (believe me, I’ve been up to my neck in so many news sites over the last few days as I wrote a blog post of my own ). Enough sources have referred to the survivor’s account and at this point there is no reason to doubt her. Or the reporters. If something comes out in the future to cast doubt on what Roof said, then so be it. Jonah came in here dismissive of either the claims of the survivor or the reporting on the claims of the survivor based on…what exactly?
There’s enough dismissiveness going around about these events. We don’t need more. If Jonah has any evidence to back their distrust in the nature of what Roof said, they ought to mention that. I don’t believe there is any, especially since, in the last 36 hours, it has become known that Dylann Roof had been planning this attack for some time, had railed on about Trayvon Martin, and had expressed racist views to a friend. In addition, the image of the man shows him sporting two flags associated with white supremacy-the flags of Rhodesia and apartheid South African. On top of the image of this Confederate license plate. There’s more than enough evidence out there, and has been for more than 36 hours now (Jonah’s comment was made @11:48 today) for one to become informed on this subject.
I didn’t get that impression, chigau (違う)
Neither did I. What I saw appeared to be dismissal of eyewitness testimony. Of course, the testimony is filtered through the media, but enough of it, along with the corroborating evidence, got through to show that Roof is definitely a racist, making the racist remarks totally in character.
My personal bias against reporters, then.
I thought one of the interesting quotes I read was that Dylan Roof reportedly “almost didn’t go through with it because everyone was so nice to him”. It makes me wonder what if he had been raised in a household or a community where this type of interaction had been a common occurrence. Somehow it sometimes seems that those who make the most adamantly hateful generalizations about a population, are those who have had very little personal interaction within that community.
ayarb003, 198:
and the first thing I thought was “so. being polite and kind won’t save your life after all.”
F.O., 190:
Nope. I’d prefer not to speak to you on this subject. Have a pleasant day.
chigau, 192:
It’s a possible interpretation, and obviously not the one I read. What I read resonated strongly with gaslighting tactics – questioning another person’s experience and their ability to report on it. It’s an utterly shitty tactic, and so many people fall for it. But reading it again and looking at the way you interpreted it, the subject may have been “reporters reporting what witnesses said” rather than “witnesses said.”
ceesays, Maureen, Nerd
I did recognize the possibility of “are you quite sure that’s what happened”.
But, these days I’m trying to go with ‘stupidity before malice’.
Can I say, right now, at this moment, I really and truly hope we’re all destroyed by a comet impact, and that the descendants of cockroaches get a chance at sapience?
Because, right now, at this moment, reading this and other threads, with people trying to fucking defend this racist shitbeverage, I really think we’d be better off not having any kind of influence on this reality at all.
That really might just be me.
If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be in the corner lolsobbing all night.
In terms of whether or not the US American South is more racist…
I was listening to yesterday’s TWiBPrime again today, and I remember one white caller from Atlanta, GA at first expressing frustration about how we can’t even have this one racist… about how she’d even feel better with a #notallwhitepeople than this complete abject denial of racism in total. Which was a legit point.
Then she mentioned how in the south, in her experience, there’s a level of “acceptable racism” around, where white people will throw the n-word around at bars willy-nilly. While the hosts did not attack her, they did push back on that idea. I didn’t call in because after her call Elon James White asked that the phone lines be left open for black people dealing with this, which made perfect sense to me. But I actually agree with the caller, having grown up in Georgia, and I think she just chose her words poorly. Not “acceptable” but “accepted” or “expected” or… well… ingrained.
My best example here is this:
In Atlanta, GA, they have a public transport system called MARTA, or Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transport Association. Unfortunately, a holy hell of a lot of people, mainly white people, took to calling it “Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta”… my dad, I’m ashamed to admit, was one of those people. But it wasn’t just him or his friends I heard this from. We all heard it for the first time at a bar we frequented often (they had a very good Darts area and my dad loves Darts) called Mazzy’s. The white stranger who said this to his white friend (also a stranger) opined that “it’s unfortunate it’s not MNRTA.” You can guess why. We often heard it basically anywhere in Georgia that MARTA was a known entity.
I also once played a gig with a close friend in North Florida, and the racism at the club we played at was rather palpable (and we were playing Blues, which this racist, all-white crowd ate up… and along with my friend’s original tunes, we played songs from Robert Johnson, Bukkah White, Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry, etc). While I did not, as far as I can remember, hear the n-word, there was so much talk about “kids with their pants down” and “that hippity-hop” and “I won’t go to Urban areas” and “damn that section 8 housing”. I heard the word “thug” a lot, as well.
Now I’m not saying that the North is any less racist than the South. I think that, however, perhaps it is true that the South is quite a bit less subtle about it. Up here on Long Island it’s much more… well… um… I don’t want to say “friendly racism”, but I’m not sure how else to put it. It’s still hostile, because all racism is hostile, but it wears a thin veneer of “friendliness” and “sympathy” and shit like that that it does not wear in the South.
————————————————————–
On a related note, that same caller also prompted Aaron Rand Freeman (another host of TWiBPrime) to make a statement:
Aaron Rand Freeman: I’m going to say something. A lot of the things that [the USA] thinks about black people are wrong. Or… in… lies. At their core. Actually, in… completely incorrect. But a lot of the things I hear about the… about the white-washed sections of this country are completely true. So… then… as a black person walking around, am I to generalize, as we’ve been generalized against? Like… and… ’cause… I get it… so if it’s not reasonable for every liberal white person to be swinging around at every racist white person that comes around, then is it… for me to protect myself – as White America has claimed to have to protect themselves against the Negro Menace and our Bikini Warriors and our Trespassers and all this other stuff – so then what am I supposed to do as a black person… when these things are actually true! When there are white people who get on and say ‘well you know, he was a little racist’… and people saying this over and over again that they know lots of racist people, but like… you know… they don’t think anything of it…
Dara M. Wilson: Or they know people who say racist things because they don’t want to call their family members or their friends racist.
Aaron Rand Freeman: …If the spree shooters are white people, and the racist things that they tell us don’t exist because we’re post-racial and ‘calm down black people’… are actually being said… then what am I supposed to think?
Dara M. Wilson: And shouldn’t you then more be able to understand the pain that we feel when people are acting like this stuff doesn’t happen… when you know for a fact that it does? “Racism is over! we’re post-racial! Sometimes you go in a bar and everybody says ‘nigger’!”
…The conversation goes on amongst Elon James White, Robyn Jordan, and Dara to basically ask “how do I know when someone is racist?”. And then Aaron finishes his thought:
Aaron Rand Freeman: We can’t tell. Like I said. So I am… I am now… like I said I’m left with nothing but to assume. So… I’m calling out. I’m now going to assume more than I did last week. I’ve assumed pretty heavily, actually. I’ve actually warned Elon about certain fights he gets with people on the internet because I’m like “you’re arguing with some white guy from nowhere; he might come and shoot you”… and I’ve said this on the air before. So now I’m just generalizing even more. So I’m… I have to protect myself and my family because I care. I’m sorry! I have no other choice.
I want to highlight this because I think it’s incredibly important. This, right here, is Schrodinger’s Racist. How can anyone expect any black person to assume the best of every white person they meat… ever? I was going to say “now” but that’s not really true, is it? The history of the US is White Supremacy. The US was built on the Slave Trade and racism has never gone anywhere. I would argue that it’s as bad as it has always been.
I am fine with this. I’m fine with Schrodinger’s Racist. Just as I will never expect any woman to ever assume the best of me, I should never expect any black person to ever assume the best of me, either. And I do think this discussion needs to be had… as long as we white people don’t try to control it.
————————————————————–
On a final note… please please please listen to yesterday’s TWiBPrime. If you’ve already heard it, listen to it again. It’s probably some the strongest and most important commentary I’ve heard on all of this. I cannot recommend it enough.
So I have a long comment that I apparently posted but it isn’t showing up? At least for me…
It either got caught because of the links or the words. I transcribed a section of yesterday’s episode of This Week in Blackness Prime where the n-word was used twice. I didn’t censor it. Probably should have. I apologize. But if that’s why it’s not showing up, just a heads up that it probably got caught in a filter.
Should I try again, censoring the n-word?
Cynical thought: It can’t be racist because the supreme court said racism is over. If it’s not, then the voting rights act is still needed. And if it’s still needed, then the “voter ID” measures could be overruled. If the voter ID measures are overruled, then the poor and minorities will have an easier time voting, and they don’t tend to vote Republican. Therefore, it cannot be racist.
Hopefully, I’m just giving those idiots too much credit.
Okay. I’m going to repost with probable offending words censored…
————————–
In terms of whether or not the US American South is more racist…
I was listening to yesterday’s TWiBPrime again today, and I remember one white caller from Atlanta, GA at first expressing frustration about how we can’t even have this one racist… about how she’d even feel better with a #notallwhitepeople than this complete abject denial of racism in total. Which was a legit point.
Then she mentioned how in the south, in her experience, there’s a level of “acceptable racism” around, where white people will throw the n-word around at bars willy-nilly. While the hosts did not attack her, they did push back on that idea. I didn’t call in because after her call Elon James White asked that the phone lines be left open for black people dealing with this, which made perfect sense to me. But I actually agree with the caller, having grown up in Georgia, and I think she just chose her words poorly. Not “acceptable” but “accepted” or “expected” or… well… ingrained.
My best example here is this:
In Atlanta, GA, they have a public transport system called MARTA, or Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transport Association. Unfortunately, a holy hell of a lot of people, mainly white people, took to calling it “Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta”… my dad, I’m ashamed to admit, was one of those people. But it wasn’t just him or his friends I heard this from. We all heard it for the first time at a bar we frequented often (they had a very good Darts area and my dad loves Darts) called Mazzy’s. The white stranger who said this to his white friend (also a stranger) opined that “it’s unfortunate it’s not MNRTA.” You can guess why. We often heard it basically anywhere in Georgia that MARTA was a known entity.
I also once played a gig with a close friend in North Florida, and the racism at the club we played at was rather palpable (and we were playing Blues, which this racist, all-white crowd ate up… and along with my friend’s original tunes, we played songs from Robert Johnson, Bukkah White, Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry, etc). While I did not, as far as I can remember, hear the n-word, there was so much talk about “kids with their pants down” and “that hippity-hop” and “I won’t go to Urban areas” and “damn that section 8 housing”. I heard the word “thug” a lot, as well.
Now I’m not saying that the North is any less racist than the South. I think that, however, perhaps it is true that the South is quite a bit less subtle about it. Up here on Long Island it’s much more… well… um… I don’t want to say “friendly racism”, but I’m not sure how else to put it. It’s still hostile, because all racism is hostile, but it wears a thin veneer of “friendliness” and “sympathy” and shit like that that it does not wear in the South.
————————————————————–
On a related note, that same caller also prompted Aaron Rand Freeman (another host of TWiBPrime) to make a statement:
Aaron Rand Freeman: I’m going to say something. A lot of the things that [the USA] thinks about black people are wrong. Or… in… lies. At their core. Actually, in… completely incorrect. But a lot of the things I hear about the… about the white-washed sections of this country are completely true. So… then… as a black person walking around, am I to generalize, as we’ve been generalized against? Like… and… ’cause… I get it… so if it’s not reasonable for every liberal white person to be swinging around at every racist white person that comes around, then is it… for me to protect myself – as White America has claimed to have to protect themselves against the Negro Menace and our Bikini Warriors and our Trespassers and all this other stuff – so then what am I supposed to do as a black person… when these things are actually true! When there are white people who get on and say ‘well you know, he was a little racist’… and people saying this over and over again that they know lots of racist people, but like… you know… they don’t think anything of it…
Dara M. Wilson: Or they know people who say racist things because they don’t want to call their family members or their friends racist.
Aaron Rand Freeman: …If the spree shooters are white people, and the racist things that they tell us don’t exist because we’re post-racial and ‘calm down black people’… are actually being said… then what am I supposed to think?
Dara M. Wilson: And shouldn’t you then more be able to understand the pain that we feel when people are acting like this stuff doesn’t happen… when you know for a fact that it does? “Racism is over! we’re post-racial! Sometimes you go in a bar and everybody says ‘n*****’!”
…The conversation goes on amongst Elon James White, Robyn Jordan, and Dara to basically ask “how do I know when someone is racist?”. And then Aaron finishes his thought:
Aaron Rand Freeman: We can’t tell. Like I said. So I am… I am now… like I said I’m left with nothing but to assume. So… I’m calling out. I’m now going to assume more than I did last week. I’ve assumed pretty heavily, actually. I’ve actually warned Elon about certain fights he gets with people on the internet because I’m like “you’re arguing with some white guy from nowhere; he might come and shoot you”… and I’ve said this on the air before. So now I’m just generalizing even more. So I’m… I have to protect myself and my family because I care. I’m sorry! I have no other choice.
I want to highlight this because I think it’s incredibly important. This, right here, is Schrodinger’s Racist. How can anyone expect any black person to assume the best of every white person they meat… ever? I was going to say “now” but that’s not really true, is it? The history of the US is White Supremacy. The US was built on the Slave Trade and racism has never gone anywhere. I would argue that it’s as bad as it has always been.
I am fine with this. I’m fine with Schrodinger’s Racist. Just as I will never expect any woman to ever assume the best of me, I should never expect any black person to ever assume the best of me, either. And I do think this discussion needs to be had… as long as we white people don’t try to control it.
————————————————————–
On a final note… please please please listen to yesterday’s TWiBPrime. If you’ve already heard it, listen to it again. It’s probably some the strongest and most important commentary I’ve heard on all of this. I cannot recommend it enough.
@Tony! The Queer Shoop #194
No need to convince me.
I think that a much shorter version of what you wrote to me would have been a good answer to Jonah.
Or even “Dude, the account has been confirmed by everyone and there is no reason to doubt it, do your homework next time”.
Thanks for the reply, though, it was useful to me.
I do understand your anger, the event and the media reaction is so appalling that I can’t even.
I don’t even know what to hope for, what to wish for.
Sorry, but this… is like claiming that car ownership has nothing to do with drive by shootings. Religions is “always” involved, in some manner. Either, from the believer side, as a necessity to granting the one taking such actions to believe that they are justified, forgiven, or even, in the extreme cases, blessed, in some manner, for committing such an act, or… as much as I might wish otherwise, from the other side, general as some warped version of nihilistic self centeredness, in which some group is deemed to be a persistent threat, for which there is no punishment to be meted out, for assassinating them. The former is much more common, however, since groups are vastly better at convincing each other to commit horrors, and loners, and I would argue that you cannot be both self centered, and not, on some level, a loner. In the real world, in which you have to deal with other people, all actions have a consequence – either the law, or the mob, or conscience. All three are much easier to drive via the ideology of faith, than they are through personal self delusion.
This is not to say that such personal delusion is not possible, just.. that it lacks the cohesive support structure that declaring oneself a defenders of “one’s race”, or “faith”, never mind “both”, give you. And.. There are only two options when you mix race and faith – either they must be lying about what faith they belong to, or, they must, by definition, be just as bad at it, due to their race, as they are at everything else you have opted to denigrate them for. They cannot be “Christian”, or, at least “good Christians”, and be an “inferior”. So goes the insane logic of mixing hate, of any kind, with religion. I can’t see “atheism” producing such a thing. Oh, some moron(s) deciding to form an ideology that has jack shit to do with atheism, then tacking it on as an after thought, sure, but.. with no cohesive set of excuses, justifications, etc., forming a core around which to build such a thing.. That’s sort of been, ironically, the whole damn point that things like atheism+, and the like argue about – we can’t even manage to agree on a coherent set of *positive* ideals to focus on, but we are supposed to be inspiring some ass none of us ever heard of, in the middle of one of the most god soaked patches of land on the planet, outside of the ME, to have “bad ideals”… How the F is that supposed to work? Is there some handbook that only Fox News knows about, but can’t, for some strange reason, show on TV, on how to inspire random flakes in places no atheist, with any survival instincts, has ever heard of, would set foot in, or give a damn about the existence of? Sure….
And therein lies a big part of the problem. Like casual rape jokes, jokes that depersonalize…well, anyone….if you are part of the peer group of someone who does that, and you don’t speak up, you are part of the problem, regardless of how you say you feel about it.
*rage*
As far as the sexist part of it, I’m sure it’s there too, with regards to the shooter, but most of the victims were women, so…I dunno, I guess trying to make sense of it is too much to ask.
Patrick G @98 mentioned a manifesto. Yes, there is a manifesto.
Excerpt from the manifesto:
Daily Kos link
An excerpt from the Roof manifest (link in comment 207):
Lynna:
One thing to note-while the manifesto does fit with our understanding of Roof’s beliefs, at this point I don’t believe it has been confirmed that the manifesto belongs to him.
Tony, you are right. Journalists are still working on the verification issue. The manifesto reads like it comes from Roof, but some caution is advised regarding authorship. We don’t know yet.
I was struck by the explanation for choosing Charleston that comes toward the end of the manifesto.
The photos on that same website can be verified. Yes, that’s Roof all right. There are two photos that feature the number 1488. On another site, a reader commented:
The writings on the other hand, the purported manifesto, is sort of a mishmash of the USA brand of white supremacy with some neo-Nazi stuff, though the manifesto seems to swing back and forth between admiration for neo-Nazi stuff and dissing Hitler’s Germany.
Roof apparently believed what he read on the internet about blacks murdering whites, if we take the description of his awakening in the manifesto as being written by Roof. All kinds of awful racism finds a home on the internet. Roof mentioned specific conservative websites.
Online records show the website was first registered under the name “Dylann Roof” in February.
The person who registered the site, lastrhodesian.com, used an address in South Carolina that arrest records show is Roof’s last known residence.
The site’s metadata also shows that it was last updated on June 17 — the day of the shooting.
roof is a racist terrorist full stop.
A note on the confederate flag and southern pride. I went to pick up my daughter and her friends all about 16-18 at the Cobb Country Georgia fair. Her friend a black young man named robert was wearing a tshirt with southern pride on the front and the battle flag on the back. I asked him why he was wearing that. I also noted that the creators of that flag would insist on owning a black man like him. He stated that old folks thought that. It meant nascar, country music, outlaw cars and bbq. He said he was proud to wear it. I told him I hoped it didnt cause him any problems and he stated only old people didnt get it. I guess I don;t.
broboxley @212:
It’s interesting that that black guy said that. I wonder if he’s aware of the origin of that flag:
****
In other news-
If that manifesto was indeed written by Roof, then Dylann Roof was radicalized by the website of a group that has been associated with GOP politicians:
Tony @214 he was born and raised in the greater Atlanta area, but georgia schools being what they are….
I have an addition to my comment on jokes at #119 above that I avoided earlier because I thought it was too off topic, but it is now on topic thanks to Larry Wilmore. I tend to avoid the positive kinds of race related humor because I often don’t trust my filters, but this is what I have seen.
All jokes are serious business because of what they do, but not all jokes that have to do with race are bad. I won’t pretend to know the formula perfectly, but I do know this:
*You must be explicitly sure that the people in that race group that you know would be ok with humor like this. In mixed company err on the side of not doing it.
*A joke that makes a person feel better about something race related that does not use the race group as a tool can work. The joke probably always has to do with making the person in that racial group feel better about the race-related pain, preferably at the expense of racists or racism.
*The bad jokes use the form of racism, do not make the person in that racial group feel better and make racists feel better about their racism.
Fucking humor, how does it work?
@ Lynna: I’d intended to come back and post a link to the manifesto, as well as the whois and domain details, but see you beat me to it. I’m
looking forwardpreemptively disgusted by how it will most likely be ignored and/or hand-waved away by most outlets.@ Tony:
Unpossible! Don’t you know Racism is Dead™? We had a Day of Jubilee™ when the Supreme Court decreed we no longer needed Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act! Plus, Party of Lincoln!
More seriously, what blows my mind is how easy it is to tie explicitly racist organizations into the existing power structure, whether that be politicians, media figures, commercial institutions, and the like. Yet people cover their eyes, stop up their ears, and repeat “Post-Racial America” as a mantra to just make it all go away. And it keeps fucking working. And organizations like the SLPC keep howling into the wind while they get called a hate group.
But remember, the important thing is that we not offend white people, especially Southerners, because heritage. /spits
Slight tangent here-
That same hate group that may have influenced Dylann Roof-the Council of Conservative Citizens-was once addressed by Tony Perkins of the hate-group the Family Research Council.
This happened while I was away, so I’ve been reading up on it, and I note that the FBI have classified it as a hate crime and are refusing to classify it as terrorism. A White Christian shooting up a Black church; of course it’s not terrorism. But an Asian Muslim shooting up a Church, well now, that’s different.