You can’t go a day without hearing someone say “The United States is a post-racial country”. In other words, racism, racial discrimination, and prejudice based on race are all things of the past. Leaving aside the fact that people who feel this way have an incomplete understanding of racism (seriously, they need a 101 lesson), these ignoramuses are also blind to the individual examples of racism that occur all the damn time. Normally I would list 5 examples of racism in the United States, but today I’m going to focus on one example.

Clementa Pinckney

Cynthia Hurd

Sharonda Coleman-Singleton

Tywanza Sanders

Ethel Lance

Susie Jackson

DePayne Middleton-Doctor

Myra Thompson

Daniel Simmons Sr.

In the early evening hours of June 17, a 21 year-old white man named Dylann Storm Roof walked into Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (EAME) Church in Charleston, South Carolina. His arrival coincided with a Bible study and prayer service. He sat peacefully for approximately an hour before he rose from his seat and opened fire on the congregants. Those 9 people above? They were all killed as a result of his murderous actions. Those 9 victims were all African-American women and men (one of them, Clementa Pinckney, was both pastor of the church and a state senator). There were a few survivors, including a young child who was told to play dead to avoid being killed. In the wake of the shooting, some have speculated as to Roof’s motives. On ABC’s The View, Senator Lindsey Graham offered his opinion on the motives of Dylann Roof:

“I can’t explain this. I don’t know what would make a young man at 21 get so sick and twisted to kill nine people in a church, this is beyond my understanding.”

“Do you think it’s a hate crime or do you think it’s more mentally disturbed?” one of the co-hosts asked Graham.

“Probably both,” he replied. “There are real people out there that are organized to kill people in religion and based on race. This guy is just whacked out.”

“But it’s 2015, there are people out there looking for Christians to kill them,” Graham added. “This is a mean time we live in.”

Why would Senator Graham think animosity toward religion was a motivating factor in Roof’s decision to shoot up an African-American church?  I’ll return to that a little later.

Another person to offer a possible explanation for Roof’s actions was conservative pastor E.W. Jackson. Even as he told the hosts and viewers of Fox & Friends to “wait for the facts”, Jackson appeared to ignore his own precautionary words:

Speaking to the hosts of Fox & Friends on Thursday morning, Jackson encouraged viewers to “wait for the facts.”

“But I’m deeply concerned that this gunman chose to go into a church because there does seem to be a rising hostility against Christians across this country because of our biblical views,” Jackson opined. “And I just think that it’s something that we have to be aware of and not create an atmosphere in which people take out their violent intentions against Christians.”

Steve Doocy, co-host of Fox & Friends, suggested that Jackson made a good point about Roof’s motives:

“Extraordinarily they called it a hate crime,” Doocy said. “Some look at it because it was a white guy apparently at a black church. But you just made a great point a moment ago about hostility towards Christians. And it was a church. So maybe that’s what they’re talking about. They haven’t explained it to us.”

“Well, most people jump to conclusions about race,” Jackson responded. “I long for the day that people stop doing that in our country.”

Echoing E.W. Jackson, Doocy appears to dismiss (or at least play down) the idea that the tragedy was motivated by racial intolerance or hatred. I wonder what evidence leads them to believe Roof was motivated by religious animus? Keep this in mind for later.

On a recent AM talk radio show, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum shared his thoughts on the reason Dylann Roof embarked on a murderous rampage. Like Graham and Jackson, Santorum thinks anti-religious views influenced Roof:

“It’s obviously a crime of hate,” he noted. “We don’t know the rationale, but what other rationale could there be. You’re sort of lost that someone would walk into a Bible study at a church and indiscriminately kill people.”

“This is one of those situation where you have to take a step a back and say — you talk about the importance of prayer at this time, and we’re now seeing assaults on religious liberty we’ve never seen before,” the candidate noted. “So, it’s a time for deeper reflection even beyond this horrible situation.”

Unlike Jackson and Graham, Santorum did not specifically state Roof’s actions were anti-Christian in nature. Given Santorum’s comment about “…assaults on religious liberty…”, however, as well as his conservative Christian beliefs, I don’t think it’s a big leap to think that he believes the massacre stemmed from a dislike of Christianity. Maybe Graham, Jackson, and Santorum are on to something. Perhaps religious animus lay at the heart of Dylann Roof’s deadly attack. After all, there are numerous examples of people using their antipathy toward a particular religion as justification (in part or whole) for acts of violence.

On the other hand, others have stepped up to offer a…different perspective on the possible justifications for the deadly violence at EAME Church. Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders believes Dylan Roof was motivated by racism:

The Charleston church killings are a tragic reminder of the ugly stain of racism that still taints our nation. pic.twitter.com/3R4zKLqq2q

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) June 18, 2015

Another Democratic presidential hopeful hinted that the violence had roots in racial bigotry. In the wake of the deadly massacre, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said:

“Cut down at prayer. Murdered in a house of God. It just broke my heart. That of course is the last place we should see violence. But we shouldn’t see it anywhere,” Clinton said. “In the days ahead, we will again ask what led to this terrible tragedy and where we as a nation need to go. In order to make sense of it, we have to be honest. We have to face hard truths about race, violence, guns and division.”

Hmm, Sanders and Clinton both see a strong racial element behind Dylann Roof’s actions. Does anyone else feel the same way? Yup!

Mirroring Clinton’s thoughts, South Carolina state Rep. Wendell Gilliard spoke about this tragedy:

This shooting “should be a warning to us all that we do have a problem in our society,” said state Rep. Wendell Gilliard, a Democrat whose district includes the church. “We need action. There’s a race problem in our country. There’s a gun problem in our country. We need to act on them quickly.”

To say that there is a race problem in the United States is an understatement. Whether its the mass imprisonment of African-Americans, the heavily racialized ‘War on Drugs‘, the racial disparities in the labor and housing markets, racially biased policing or sentencing decisions by the courts, it is clear that a racially biased social structure and hierarchy exists in this country. This hierarchy has resulted in structural advantages that benefit white people to the exclusion of African-Americans (and all other People of Color). The concept at the core of those structural advantages? White supremacy:

The Ideology of White Supremacy

To fully understand white supremacy we have to separate it from the people who identify as white. White supremacy is not a person or group of people, it’s an ideology. Ideology is fancy-sociology-speak for a collection of ideas that work together to affect how we see and understand the world around us. As an ideology, white supremacy encourages us to value white people, white culture, and everything associated with whiteness above the people, culture, and everything associated with people of color. We can encapsulate all of that by using the common white supremacist tagline, “white is right.”

We also have to separate white supremacy from white supremacists. Too often when we hear the word white supremacy we immediately think of men in white pointy hats standing around a burning cross. There’s no argument that the Kl Klux Klan and Neo Nazis subscribe to the white supremacist ideology, but they’re not the only ones. Anyone and everyone can adopt the ideology and white supremacy is reinforced by a wide variety of actions both big/small and intentional/unintentional.

The ideology of white supremacy is woven into the history of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. That history stretches back to the early 1800’s when minister and former slave Richard Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Allen hoped to establish a place of worship for African-Americans, one free of the tyranny of discrimination from the white majority. In 1818, a mere two years after its birth, the popularity of the AME Church had grown so large that 75% of all black Methodists in Charleston left their churches to join Allen’s (source). Unfortunately, the specter of white supremacy loomed large over the AME:

White residents of Charleston closely monitored the church, and sometimes disrupted its worship services, out of fear over what black attendees might be planning together. One of the church’s founders, Denmark Vesey, was indeed laying the groundwork for a rebellion. In 1822, Emanuel A.M.E. was investigated for its role in Vesey’s attempted slave revolt and subsequently burned to the ground.

The church was rebuilt, but, thanks to laws prohibiting all-black congregations enacted throughout much of the South, parishioners were forced to meet in secret. In 1865, after years of underground worship, the church was officially recognized again. Congregants adopted the Hebrew name “Emanuel” — which means “God is with us.”

The building was destroyed yet again in 1886 by an earthquake, and was yet again rebuilt.

During the 21st century, Emanuel A.M.E. was a fixture of the civil rights movement. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. visited the church in 1962 for a rally focused on voter registration, during which he declared that voting was the key to making the “American dream a reality.” In 1969, Coretta Scott King led a crowd of 1,600 protesters to the church in support of the city’s mostly black hospital workers, during which dozens of attendees were arrested.

Today, the church is designated as an African American National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service. On its website, the Park Service notes that Emanuel A.M.E.’s history “reflects the development of religious institutions for African Americans in Charleston” as a whole. [Think Progress]

Given its history, it should come as no surprise that many African-Americans view yesterdays crime as a blow to Charleston’s black community. In an interview with the Washington Post, early 20th century history student Robert Greene says of the EAME Church, “It’s not just a church. It’s also a symbol … of black freedom,” and “That’s why so many folks are so upset tonight, because it’s a church that represents so much about the rich history and tradition of African Americans in Charleston.”

According to Raw Story, Dylann Roof lived in Columbia, S.C., which is roughly 2 hours from Charleston, S.C. If this tragedy was the result of animus against religion, why did he not stop at somewhere along the way? I’m sure there’s no shortage of churches between Columbia and Charleston. For that matter, why did he not simply find a black church in Columbia? Hopefully we will find out more information in the days and weeks to come. Until then, all we can do is speculate as to why he chose the Emanuel AME Church as the site of his murderous actions.

There is one thing we do not need to speculate on: the motivations of Dylann Roof. After all, D.W. Jackson, Steve Doocy, and Lindsey Graham were quick to let the world know his motives were rooted in hostility toward religion. And they couldn’t possibly be wrong could they? Actually, yes. Not only is there no evidence that Roof felt hostile toward Christianity (or any religion for that matter), there is actual evidence that Dylann Roof was motivated by the ideology of white supremacy:

Joseph Meek Jr. told the Associated Press that he and Roof were best friends in middle school, then reconnected a few weeks ago when Roof reached out to Meek on Facebook. Meek says Roof had begun ranting about the murders of Trayvon Martin and Freddie Gray and saying that black people were “taking over the world.”

“He said blacks were taking over the world. Someone needed to do something about it for the white race,” Meek said. “He said he wanted segregation between whites and blacks. I said, ‘That’s not the way it should be.’ But he kept talking about it.”

• Wants segregation between African-Americans and Caucasians? Check.
• Thinks African-Americans are taking over the world? Check.
• Thinks the “white race” is endangered? Check.

But wait, there’s more.

The gunman who killed nine people during a Bible study meeting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, spewed a message of hate. Sylvia Johnson—a cousin of church pastor Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in the attack—says a survivor told her the gunman reloaded five times. “He just said ‘I have to do it,’” Johnson reports the survivor saying. “‘You rape our women and you’re taking over the country. You have to go.’”

More white supremacist rhetoric. Was D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation one of his favorite books? I have no way of knowing, but I do know that book popularized the idea of the black man as a savage sexual beast roaming the countryside seeking white women to rape. The punishment meted out to black men by white men was nothing short of brutal. In the book, black men accused of raping white women were lynched and tortured to death. This thoroughly repugnant racist shit is a concept that’s been around for well over a century (since at least the post-Civil War Reconstruction period). For white racists seeking to commit violence against African-Americans, the claim that a black man raped a white woman was all they needed to make their violent fantasies a reality. Dylann Roof’s actions have their roots in the Brute Caricature:

During the Radical Reconstruction period (1867-1877), many white writers argued that without slavery — which supposedly suppressed their animalistic tendencies — blacks were reverting to criminal savagery. The belief that the newly-emancipated blacks were a “black peril” continued into the early 1900s. Writers like the novelist Thomas Nelson Page (1904) lamented that the slavery-era “good old darkies” had been replaced by the “new issue” (blacks born after slavery) whom he described as “lazy, thriftless, intemperate, insolent, dishonest, and without the most rudimentary elements of morality” (pp. 80, 163). Page, who helped popularize the images of cheerful and devoted Mammies and Sambos in his early books, became one of the first writers to introduce a literary black brute. In 1898 he published Red Rock, a Reconstruction novel, with the heinous figure of Moses, a loathsome and sinister black politician. Moses tried to rape a white woman: “He gave a snarl of rage and sprang at her like a wild beast” (pp. 356-358). He was later lynched for “a terrible crime.”

The “terrible crime” most often mentioned in connection with the black brute was rape, specifically the rape of a white woman. At the beginning of the twentieth century, much of the virulent, anti-black propaganda that found its way into scientific journals, local newspapers, and best-selling novels focused on the stereotype of the black rapist. The claim that black brutes were, in epidemic numbers, raping white women became the public rationalization for the lynching of blacks.

But those white racists were not terribly concerned with the truth. They just wanted to lynch black bodies and used any excuse, no matter how flimsy, to do so. They didn’t care whether or not a black person actually raped a white woman. If they did care about the truth, they would have found that there was no epidemic of black men raping white women, as the late journalist Ida B. Wells noted:

Yeah, so not so much with the epidemic.

Another thing I despise about Roof’s words, is the reference to raping “our women”. On some level, he views white women as the property of white men. He and others like him think they are the protectors of white women’s sexuality. I do not hate to break this to him in the slightest-all women have the right to bodily integrity and autonomy. You don’t own, control, or have any “protective rights” over women’s bodies. Nor does any other white supremacist. This misogyny is like the shit-frosting on top of the shit-cake that is racism. And that’s not the only misogyny going on in Roof’s comments. I can’t help but think that he’s referring to black men. His comments about “raping our women” lead me to believe he’s addressing black men, and treating black women as if they don’t exist. He wants to rid the country of black men…what about black women? Oh, it’s because they are so trivial, so unimportant as to not even need addressing.  We’ll add misogynoir to his awfulness.

And today, we get more pundits and politicians weighing in, erasing the racism and white supremacist ideology at the core of Roof’s actions. Here’s Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush acting like he can’t read words:

“I don’t know what was on the mind or the heart of the man who committed these atrocious crimes,” the former Florida governor said at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference.

Clearly you need some assistance Jeb. There’s this thing called the internet. It’s a place a lot of people go when they want to read the news. The following words can be found on a bazillion sites across the internet. They were spoken by the killer, Dylann Roof:

“You rape our women, and you’re taking over the country. And you have to go.”

Those words were spoken to a black woman. In a black church. They were the words he provided as justification for his actions. These words are not hard to find. Reporting on the events in Charleston has been going on since Wednesday night. You can google “Charleston shooting” and up pops 40 million plus views. I know you can do this because you have a lot of fucking money. Which means you have a computer or ten. Probably a cell phone with internet access. I bet you even have a tablet of some sort. On top of all that, you probably surround yourself with people who can look these things up for you when you’re too busy waffling on whether or not you would have invaded Iraq like your asshole brother did. And while I don’t watch television, I’m willing to bet that various news channels have covered the shooting. So don’t you dare play the ignorant card here. We’re not talking about trying to divine the motives of an anonymous person who slashed a car tire or someone who committed “suicide by cop”. We’re talking about the motives of a person who expressed white supremacist views. He is one of the faces of the virulent racism going on in this country. There’s also the crap that his friend told us, which by the way is kinda creepy (because if you knew he had been planning this shit for months, why did you remain silent?).

There’s pundit Jesse Lee Peterson from the Worldnet Daily (a conservative site) claiming that calling white people racists is what causes terrorists like Roof to shoot up churches:

“White people are feeling fear,” Peterson said. “If they should speak up, they’re called racists, and they are feeling guilt because they feel a sense of responsibility for what’s going on when they really have nothing to do with it

“They have all this anger that’s starting to build up inside of them, and I am very concerned,” Peterson continued. “I’ve been concerned for a long time that if they don’t open up and express themselves and say, ‘No,’ when they’re called racists, we’re going to see more killing. I want to be wrong, but we are going to see – especially young white men and women – we’re going to see more of them carrying out acts like the one we just saw in South Carolina.”

I really don’t have any words for this Uncle Tom douchebag other than FUCK YOU.

And then there’s this shiny, shitty bit from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie:

“This type of conduct is something that only our display of our own love and good faith that’s in our heart can change. Laws can’t change this,” he said at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Washington D.C. “Only the goodwill and the love of the American people can let those folks know that that act was unacceptable, disgraceful, that we need to do more to show that we love each other.”

Oh yeah, because love has been so successful at stamping out racism in the United States. It was goodwill that ended the Civil War huh? As I said on Facebook:

At this point, I’m ready for some laws. There are 19 hate groups in S.C. alone. There are hundreds across the country. There has been a 755% increase in hate groups during President Obama’s tenure. The U.S. has seen far too many of these types of crimes, and almost all of them have been committed by white men. Something-legal and ethical-needs to be done about this. Love isn’t going to do it. If that were all it took, we wouldn’t have had slavery. And Jim Crow. And lynchings. And the KKK or the League of the South. And Birth of a Nation. And the Tulsa Riots of 1921. And George fucking Zimmerman. And so many more horrible acts of violence committed by white people against African-Americans. I’m not demonizing all white people here. There are a great many wonderful, not racist white people in this country and many of them are actively working to combat the scourge of racism in the United States. Unfortunately, the defenders and perpetrators of racism are still around. They may have gone underground in some cases, but not in all. I mean we have an entire cable news network that demonizes People of Color on a regular basis. We have an entire political party that screws over People of Color every chance they get (and no, it’s not the Democrats). And we have vast swathes of the population who may not be overtly racist, but they support that shit. The people who watch FOX “News” or support the GOP-they’re keeping these people…these Grade-A racist douchebags…In. Power. They’re enablers for racism. And these are the same people talking about how great the United States is.

Great?

For whom?

Oh, that’s right–rich, white, heterosexual, cisgender men. It’s always been this way.

In closing, I’m just going to quote Jon Stewart:

I honestly have nothing other than just sadness once again that we have to peer into the abyss of the depraved violence that we do to each other and the nexus of a just gaping racial wound that will not heal yet we pretend doesn’t exist. I’m confident though, that by acknowledging it – by staring into that and seeing it for what it is…We still won’t do jack shit. Yeah, that’s us. And that’s the part that blows my mind.

I don’t want to get into the political argument of guns and things. What blows my mind is the disparity of response between when we think people that are foreign are going to kill us and us killing ourselves…

If this had been what we thought was Islamic terrorism, it would fit into our [narrative]. We invaded two countries and spent trillions of dollars and [lost] thousands of American lives and now fly unmanned death machines over like five or six different counties, all to keep Americans safe. We’ve got to do whatever we can – we’ll torture people. We’ve got to do whatever we can to keep Americans safe. But nine people shot in a church, what about that? “Hey, what are you going go to do? Crazy is as crazy is, right?”

That’s the part that I cannot, for the life of me, wrap my head around. And you know it’s gonna go down the same path. “This is a terrible tragedy.” They are already using the nuanced language of lack of effort for this.

This is a terrorist attack. This is a violent attack on the Emanuel Church in South Carolina which is a symbol for the black community. It has stood in that part of Charleston for a hundred and some years and has been attacked viciously many times – as many black churches have. And to pretend that – I heard someone on the news say – “tragedy has visited this church”. This wasn’t a tornado. This was a racist. This was a guy with a Rhodesia badge on his sweater. So the idea that – I hate to even use this pun – but this one is black and white. There’s no nuance here. And we’re gonna keep pretending like, “I don’t get it, what happened. This one guy lost his mind.”

But we are steeped in that culture in this country and we refuse to recognize it. And I cannot believe how hard people are working to discount it. In South Carolina, the roads that people drive on are named for Confederate generals who fought to keep black people from being able to drive freely on that road. That’s insanity. That’s racial wallpaper. You can’t allow that.

Nine people were shot in a black church by a white guy who hated them – who wanted to start some kind of civil war. The Confederate flag flies over South Carolina and the roads are named for Confederate generals. And the white guy is the one who feels his country’s being taken away from him. We’re bringing it on ourselves.

And that’s the thing – Al Qaeda, all those guys, ISIS – they’re not shit compared to the damage that we can apparently do to ourselves on a regular basis.

This was indeed an act of terrorism against the African-American community. A white USAmerican terrorist shot and killed 9 people in a horrific act of racial violence. The full extent of his intent may not be known, but it is obvious he made a specific choice to attack the EAME Church. I suspect the reason is because he knew how important the church is to the African-American community in Charleston. I feel his attack was a deliberate attempt to strike at the heart of the black community. To instill fear and terror in the hearts of that community. To show them that they can be attacked anywhere and everywhere, including their houses of worship (that message is nothing new, btw). I don’t know what can be done to combat the scourge of racism in the United States, but I do know that the “answers” provided by people like Lindsey Graham, E.W. Jackson, Jesse Lee Peterson, Steve Doocy, Rick Santorum, Chris Christie, and Jeb Bush are repulsive. They deny the experiences of black USAmericans and treat their concerns as if they’re trivial at best, and non-existent at worst. By arguing against the reality-based narrative that racism exists and is a problem in this country, they are enabling white supremacists. Enabling them provides cover for their actions–and make no mistake, they want more of this terroristic violence. They want more atrocities. More attacks on African-Americans. More children forced to play dead just so they can stay alive. And that’s despicable.

All photos courtesy of the Washington Post.