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US Terrorist attack: Nine killed in Charleston Hate Crime


The Somalian

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Why Recognizing The Charleston Church Shooting As An Act Of Racially Motivated Terrorism Is Only The First Step

 

 
I took a moment of silence last night.
 
A long moment... as I struggled to sort through my emotions while I painfully watched breaking news broadcast reports that gunshots seared through Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina around 9 p.m Wednesday. Nine people, who congregated for a prayer meeting, were killed.
 
The shots were fired by an unidentified 21-year-old white man who entered the church and opened fire -- meanwhile, the massacre will be investigated as a hate crime, Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen said. However, by definition, it was a domestic act of terrorism and the gunman, a terrorist.
 
The shooting, heinous in every regard, immediately prompted panic and pandemonium as police arrived to the scene and attempted to locate and arrest the shooter. Police, so far, have been unsuccessful; the gunman is still at large.
 
As the victims become publicly identified -- so far only one, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, has been named as among the nine dead -- we must acknowledge that this atrocious act occurred inside one of the nation's oldest and most prominent black churches, making it hard to argue against the logical assumptions that all of the victims are black. More importantly, despite any confirmation of the gunman's motives, it would be remiss to not consider this wicked act of violence is an one of racial hate and terrorism. It appears steeped in the repulsive reality of race in America and the injustice it has forged against black lives everywhere.
 
“It’s obvious that it’s race,” one local resident told an MSNBC reporter of the murderer’s motives. “You got a white guy coming into an African American church. That’s a choice, he chose to go into that church and harm those people.”
 
The agony pulsing through Charleston today is the same piercing pain felt each time a black life is lost to the acts of bigots and brutality. It is the familiar pain felt each time a black life is violently dehumanized, devalued and disposed of -- often without repercussion.
 
It's not breaking news that being black in America can be difficult and frightening, to say the least. Now, more than ever, we cannot ignore or mask the reality that we live in a country where one’s complexion is a direct threat to their safety and livelihood.
 
Last week, I watched in horror as a white police officer yelled and used excessive force against young, black kids at a pool party in McKinney, Texas. A 15-year-old black girl was pinned to the ground and cried out for her mother as the officer dug his knee into her back. Moments before, he wielded his gun at two young black boys as they tried to come to her aid.
 
Much less importantly, in the last few days, I have seen former NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal's white face, terribly tanned and masked as “black,” plastered across TV screens, her name dominating my Twitter timeline and her life dissected through discussions I've both overheard and participated in. Today, and every day going forward, I no longer care to see, hear or say her name ever again.
 
Dolezal is a distraction and her story is far too confusing, contradictory and complicated to be used as a catalyst to reexamine or redefine race and, more specifically, what it means to be black. She doesn’t deserve that privilege -- and we shouldn’t allow it.
 
Instead, if we are motivated to truthfully examine the role of race and racial violence, let us look to the events in McKinney, which dominated the news cycle just days before and made us witness, yet again, the harsh treatment of white officers against black lives.
 
Let us look to the Dominican Republic, where hundreds of thousands of Haitians fear being deported in a move rooted in racism.
 
Let us look to our criminal justice system and the long-term and fatal effects it has had on countless individuals like Kalief Browder.
 
Let us look to the death of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man who was shot by a white police officer in April, just miles away from Wednesday’s church shooting.
 
Let us look to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 when four young black girls were the victims of another hate crime targeted at another predominantly black church.
 
Let us look to the purpose and mission of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
 
Lastly, let us look to all the other black men and women who have been brutalized and killed under similar, distressing circumstances as acts of racial violence.
 
To understand race, author Ta-Nehisi Coates steers us in the right direction. In his latest piece in The Atlantic, Coates urges us to reexamine “America’s greatest and most essential crimes -- the centuries of plunder which birthed the hierarchy which we now euphemistically call ‘race.’”
 
He wrote:
 
Kalief Browder died, like Renisha McBride died, like Tamir Rice died, because they were born and boxed into the lowest cavity of that hierarchy. If not for those deaths, if not for the taking of young boys off the streets of New York, and the pinning of young girls on the lawns of McKinney, Texas, the debate over Rachel Dolezal’s masquerade would wither and blow away, because it would have no real import nor meaning.
The time is now. Let us all take a moment to reflect on the horrific violence that occurred at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
 
What's more, I challenge you to extend that moment to examine the role of race as it relates to this tragedy -- and take worry in knowing the shooter still roams free and is still capable of acting out on his hatred and committing more crimes. If black people are not safe in places of sanctuary, then we are not safe anywhere.
 
“This is as bad as it can get,” one black Charleston resident told a reporter Wednesday night. “If we can’t find refuge in church, where can we go? Where can we be safe?”
 
 
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