Last Wednesday night, a 21-year-old white supremacist terrorist walked into Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina and massacred nine black people simply because they were black. No matter how many white commentators say it, this was not a crime perpetrated by some demented, evil individual. It was an act of terrorism, and the murderer is a terrorist.
Neither he nor this heinous crime against humanity is some anomaly or aberration. He and his kind are as organic a part of America as the Rocky Mountains or the Mississippi River, and these violent outbursts are to be expected with the historical consistency of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park. As President Obama stated in the Marc Maron podcast, racism is in America’s DNA.
Because of the scale and viciousness of the massacre, we were all shocked, but none us should have been surprised. Not to have been shocked by this massacre means you lack a moral compass. But to be surprised, you would have to be actively ignorant of American history.
Hate crimes are a function of the extreme hatred of the perpetrator for some inherent characteristic of the victim – race, ethnicity, sexual orientation. The choice of victim is usually random and the timing opportunistic.
Terrorism is the use of violence to intimidate a group of people as a way of achieving a political goal. This means that terrorism is a planned act. The terrorist chooses victims as a conscious, rational decision in order to change or control the behavior of the group he is targeting. The victims are picked, not as individuals, but because of their membership in the targeted group. In addition, the location tends to have important symbolic value to the targeted group.
In America, the terrorists are typically white males whose objective is white male supremacy. Blacks’ insistence on full humanity in America is an existential threat to white supremacy. It also explains historically why the soldiers of white terrorism tend to be undereducated, economically disadvantaged whites at the bottom of white society, because they feel their white privilege is at risk.
Dylann Roof allegedly drove 100 miles to get to Emanuel AME. If he just wanted to murder black people in a black church because he hated them, he drove past other opportunities many times on the way to Emanuel. It seems likely that he picked Emanuel because of its symbolic importance, not just to the black community of Charleston, but to the history of black resistance to white supremacy. It’s the same reason the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed.
We must educate our children about the massacre at Emanuel AME Church. Here is what I propose that we tell them.
You live in an America that is changing exponentially, but it’s also an America that has not changed. Which means you simultaneously live in a place of extraordinary individual opportunity and a place of great collective personal danger.
And as long as you are black, here is what you must understand about America: you will always have enemies, your enemies are dangerous, and your enemies are relentless. But if you stay connected to the spirits of your ancestors, your enemies cannot prevail.
Mike Jones is a member of the Missouri State Board of Education and The St. Louis American editorial board.
