Charleston: Undercurrent Of Racism Or A Lone Gunman

There seem to be two arguments around the recent Charleston shootings

1] that it is all about a mentally ill loner

2] that it reveals an undercurrent of racism in American society

What do people here think?

 

With all that has been revealed so far I have heard several other theories as well. The guy was under a felony indictment and has had other problems with the law. There's a rumor he was "assaulted" in jail at some point. After Anders Breivik shot up a camp and killed 77 people there was all manner of analysis to figure out why. His few posts on the web told little and some of the hate sites even banned him for being over the top. So far all we have that's similar about Roof is that he kept a psychotic diary like Breivik and Kaczynski as well as interpreting the world through alternative media.

One problem I have with the racism-as-a-sole-cause argument is that it requires racism to be a singular focus. It pushes all of the facts into a narrow tube. I have no doubt this guy was as racist as it gets. But most racists don't kill anyone. Most racists keep the bulk of their racism to themselves. If I was to say that the only reason he did this was racism, there would be no reason to discuss it further for most people. It's a convenient hat hook so I prefer to avoid it as a sole causal factor in any crime. If I was to assign it as a sole cause I'd have to do the same to the killers in Knoxville, the beltway snipers and all of the recent beheadings in the US.

Racism in the US has never been an undercurrent. Efforts have been made to beat it down by busing children all over town, forcing the integration of neighborhoods and set-asides for higher education, jobs and municipal contracts. But the actual issue has not been addressed much. In fact, it has stalled because any "conversation about race" that starts quickly turns into a finger-pointing melee as ancient grudges come against the descendants of people who had nothing to do with it.

There is also a perception in the US that only white people can be racists, which gives everyone else a license to shit on white people with impunity. They can't jump, have small dicks, no rhythm, wrinkle early and smell like wet dogs. Or so I hear. Until everybody on all sides can learn to tame their hate and admit their own complicity in the overt racism in the US, how can anything change? How is it possible if only 1 group gives up racism while the rest continue? The only undercurrent in the US regarding race is the slight bits of real honesty that leak out of the discussion once in a while.

 

Both points have validity. The shooter acted on his own, yet he did't grow up on an island with a population of one.

Fortunately, we're well beyond the time when such actions used to receive broad public support from whites.

 

Agreed with Post #3 it can be both.


Over the past six years, Our President has told us not to attribute acts of terrorism to the wider community from which the terrorists come.

Wondering if this theory is being reevaluated? or is it applicable to the horror of the Charlestown massacre.

 

Do we consider Racial reconciliation to be a moral issue, or a legal issue?

 

Here is an interesting case

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/25/zack-davies-racist-guilty-attempted-murder-dentist

A racist attacks someone in a supermarket in broad daylight hacking them with a machete they hold in one hand and hitting them with a hammer held in the other while shouting out ‘white power’ and other racist remarks, he chose his victim a doctor because he looked Asian.

Thing is that the victim although very badly injured survived the attack.

OK one kid with a gun kills nine one man forced to use lesser weapons because he hasn’t access to guns can’t even kill one person.

Food for thought.

 

It all starts in school at a young age. Bullying, taunting, judgmental, racism, sexual orientation. By teachers and students and parents of students. It also starts at home at a young age and will never end, just slowly fade away until the "old" ways are genetically fazed out.

Too much coin to be made from Racism and Bullying campaigns, from the simple playground "give me your lunch money" to the inside of a court room because someone is suing for not getting a job from lack of exp, but because he/she is Black, the belief is that alone.

He killed them, Why? we will never know. But it is not because of a Flag or guns.

Where is the outcry from all those white Policemen killed by Black folks because of Ferguson. Is that not also Racism or is it OK cause they are of a Black tint? Racism is a two way street.

As soon as people stop pretending that it is still like it was in 1860 and realizing that WE did not enslave you, so just live your life. We all have a job and bills and family.

Look back at the early Spanish Fleets or the English or Dutch Fleets of the 17-20 centuries. They were your ancestors en slavers not the folks next door to you. They sold your ancestors to a young niave colony of people that didn't have the mental capacity to see that it was wrong.(Then they realized money can be made) I believe that slavery was done as more of a fear issue then simply hate. Remember, the times of slavery was a time when a lot of the Earth was newly being discovered and a black African was unknown and feared

There is no singular race anymore ( except maybe in true native peoples), we are all more or less a mix of various creeds and ethnicity. Lets start acting as one

Again if there was no money to be made in Slavery, we would never have had this issue today.

 

"As soon as people stop pretending that it is still like it was in 1860 "

I suspect this closer to fact than fiction. We live in a post-industrial age, w/ our digital devices, but our topics of debate remain stuck in 19th-century romantic idealism; that brought us Am. evangelical Christianity (Cane County revival), (industrial) capitalism, communism (Marx was in the main a romantic political philosopher), Darwinism, & psychoanalysis.
The French-European Symbolist Movement was a late addition to the romantic idealist philosophy, & we love our symbols (capitalism, communism, psychoanalysis rely on symbols). So when a misguided 20-something shoots 9 people dead in an historic Charleston, SC, church, the "news" is delivered to us in symbols: this crime is symbolic of 1) racism (white shooter killed black people), 2) untreated mental illness (shooter "must be crazy"), 3) need for gun control (why'd this guy have gun?). These are valid topics of debate, discussion; but the symbols divert attention from that fact that a young guy committed a heinous crime.
This almost seems to be the sole job of public media: to divert attention from event w/ an emphasis on its symbolism. Everyone joins in, & selected "experts" even get to spout their "beliefs" in their symbols to the public. There's the old saw that the map is not the territory, & Bateson wrote that the headline was not the event, but these days the headline is the event: a symbol open to "interpretation."

 

The Wichita Massacare, commited by the Carr brothers didn't get near the attention and it was clearly of racial motivation, same thing with the zebra killings and same thing with many other violent acts over the years. We're supposed to live in a post racial Murika, yet MTV now has a "documentary" out which shames white people for so called race based privledges, funny because every public establishment I go to or encounter, including drinking fountains and restrooms, they don't bar or ban anyone because of race, nor do public schools, yet we still have all black universities and colleges to this very day, but it's not cool to call afrocentric exclusionism out for what it is.