i couldn’t quite believe that the victims’ families were already talking forgiveness. i can understand eschewing hate, but what about the hurt and the anger? so soon after the massacre, i would still be too hurt and angry to forgive. i’d need time to process the loss of a loved one in a house of god during bible study. i’d need to know more about this killer — is it genetic, he has ku klux klan roots? is he psychotic, completely out of touch with reality? or is it racism, he simply hates american blacks the way hitler hated jews? where did he learn this hate? from a family member? a friend? a teacher? the web? all of the above? i would want to know where he was coming from when he planned and carried out the killings. to start a race war, he confessed. as if a race war has not been going on in america like forever. i guess he wanted to liven things up, he was bored? i would need convincing that he did not know what he was doing before i can even begin to think forgiveness.
There were two race wars of note in America, one called the Civil War under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln, and the other during the mid-1960’s when the final barriers to integration were taken down under the leadership of Martin Luther King.
Currently there are strains between police and the black community due to police overreactions to provocations, but there is no war going on. America succeeded during the late part of the 20th century in knocking down walls to education and job opportunities, but not the wall between poverty and a good life. To that extent, the current battle is between the disadvantaged and the advantaged.
It is important to note that America is perhaps the most ethnically diverse nation on the planet, and the most progressive at ensuring fair treatment for all races, religions, genders, ages, or handicapped people.
As for forgiveness, people who must deal with the ultimate grief do it the way that works for them, and perhaps those deep of faith simply give hate up to God. Government agencies will deal with the practicalities. Other people will deal with the gun nuts and social issues. Those of faith, who are hurting, simply choose not to carry on with the angers, for there is nothing to be gained from it. I believe they should be condoled and respected for emulating Jesus to the best of their ability. It would be a kinder world if more people did in fact walk with Jesus.
Some of them will forgive, some of them will retaliate. Tit for tat. The war of the races goes on. There are instigators in both sides. The US government should be forever be on the alert. Or it will destroy America.
Charleston shooting: Confederate flag at heart of growing political storm http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/20/charleston-shooting-confederate-flag-south-carolina
The Confederacy is not our heritage http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/06/19/1394636/-The-Confederacy-is-not-our-heritage?detail=facebook_sf
they are doing exactly what xtianity preaches. good for them. an example to all xtians worldwide.
Now we know who is civilized.
As to Root, well…America is a racist society, specially so against blacks…just look at the state and federal laws and programs – housing, voting, red lining lending practices, education – and you will see racism institutionalized.
It is not true that the final barriers to integration were taken down in the sixties. Again go back to the laws and programs, research those that were not repealed or amended, those that were passed after the civil rights acts etc that took advantage of the loopholes in those landmark legislations. Recently, the SCOTUS even rolled back the Voting Rights Act on the pretext that the conditions that necessitated its passing do not exist anymore.
There is rhetoric and there is reality. Just drive through ghettoes and the rhetoric about “ensuring fair treatment for all races, religions, genders, ages, or handicapped people” rings hollow.
Did black people choose to live in ghettoes; attend underfunded schools that left them unequipped to compete in the job market; choose not to get health insurance because they did not care to avail of health services? Did they end up in that condition despite an even playing field or was the playing field tilted to favor white America over the blacks? Again go back to the laws and programs.
What does the Confederate flag flying over a state capitol surrounded by monuments honoring Confederate personalities say about America’s tolerance of a state that reveres the symbol of white supremacy and honors its defenders?
I saw this yesterday http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/shields-brooks-church-shooting-popes-environmentalism/“>PBS’s “NewsHour” and it angered me.
Here is my reaction to it.
True to form, in last Friday’s broadcast of PBS’s “NewsHour”, New York Times columnist David Brooks called the massacre of 9 blacks in a South Carolina church “completely bizarre”.
“The horror is the horror,” Brooks said. “I confess, I’m a little confused about how much to generalize. We have a race problem in this country. That is so obvious. But we also have an angry solitary young man problem. And I’m not sure a lot of the angry solitary young men are directly connected. They are obviously loosely connected to the history of race in this country. But they are angry solitary young men looking for hateful and vicious ideologies. Some of them turn into neo-Nazi skinheads. I don’t think we have a Nazi problem in this country. They are solitary and they’re hate-mongers. And the guy sits with the Bible study group for an hour and then starts shooting them. That’s beyond — beyond imagination. And so I — it’s obviously connected, but I’m a little wary of the too pat causations that are linked between our general race problem and this specific, completely bizarre, and completely evil incident.”
Calling a race-motivated massacre completely bizarre is, in and of itself, completely bizarre. It denies a linkage between what Brooks euphemistically calls “our general race problem” (he can’t bring himself to call it by its true name: racism) and the massacre.
What would be completely bizarre is if the shootings occurred in a society that was not racist. Deniers like Brooks perpetuate racism because they want to focus on the individual and not the society that created him.
Brooks describes the killer as “an angry solitary man”.
WTF Brooks? Roof did not spring out of nowhere. He was raised and nurtured by a country that still tolerates the display of the Confederate flag in a state capitol. Does the confederate flag honor heritage or racism? Does not that flag symbolize white supremacy over blacks and the institution of slavery?
These are the words of the Founding Fathers of the Confederacy :
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth…”
Brooks added that he is for taking down the Confederate flag on “simple neighborliness grounds”.
“If a group of people is offended by it, that should be enough. That should be enough. We are good citizens to each other and we do not things that offend other people in symbolic ways.”
No shit, Sherlock. You take down the Confederate flag not because it offends “other” people but because of what it stands for, that “the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”
The Confederate flag symbolizes something that has no place on this earth. Period…unless you are like David Brooks who thinks eliminating racism is important only to “other” people.
Heritage of hate: Dylann Roof, white supremacy and the truth about the Confederacy
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/heritage-of-hate-dylann-roof-white-supremacy-and-the-truth-about-the-confederacy/
“This is the privilege of whiteness: While a terrorist may be white, his violence is never based in his whiteness. A white terrorist has unique, complicated motives that we will never comprehend. He can be a disturbed loner or a monster. He is either mentally ill or pure evil. The white terrorist exists solely as a dyad of extremes: Either he is humanized to the point of sympathy or he is so monstrous that he almost becomes mythological. Either way, he is never indicative of anything larger about whiteness, nor is he ever a garden-variety racist. He represents nothing but himself. A white terrorist is anything that frames him as an anomaly and separates him from the long, storied history of white terrorism.
“I’m always struck by this hesitance not only to name white terrorism but to name whiteness itself during acts of racial violence.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/magazine/white-terrorism-is-as-old-as-america.html?_r=0
“Slavery’s Long Shadow” by Paul Krugman
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/opinion/paul-krugman-slaverys-long-shadow.html?_r=0