Many (white) people are trying to justify (write off) Dylann Roof as "an insane person" (what white people are called when they do acts that non-white "terrorists", "thugs", and "monsters" do).
I say that though he may or may not be insane, the point is that he felt comfortable, emboldened, and justified as if it were his duty to massacre 9 innocent people.
What made him feel this way? I suggest the following people:
- Sean Hannity, who has made a career of defending horribly racist people, giving them unchallenged platforms to air their pathetic excuse for beliefs, all the while hiding from his associations with known Nazis.
http://www.newshounds.us/2008/03/20/hannity_denies_past_association_with_white_supremacist_but_evidence_suggests_otherwise.php… - Rush Limbaugh, who has made a career of tasteless, racist, sexist, and homophobic rants.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/03/07/the-20-worst-racial-attacks-limbaughs-advertise/184776 - Bill O'Reilly, who has a long, well-documented career of letting his true racist beliefs slip out. A lot. Quite frequently, in fact.
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/oreillys-racist-slurs-in-context/ - The Tea party, which so far, at nearly every rally, has plenty of signs, speakers, and other evidence of the racism that permeates the movement. The movement, which is responsible for getting many people elected into public office, has continued to deny its racism, but failed to explain the overwhelming evidence of it.
http://aattp.org/20-more-insane-racist-tea-party-signs/
http://www.motherjones.com/slideshows/2010/09/tea-partys-racist-signs/niggar
http://www.forwardprogressives.com/blatant-racism-full-display-tea-party-rally-front-white-house-video/
- The Republican Party, many members of which have been pushing racist ideology and messages for decades.
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/10/the_gop_has_scores_of_racists_a_former_bush_official_condemns_modern_republican_orthodoxy/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/13/chris-matthews-gop-jim-crow-alive-21st-century_n_6863328.html
http://samuel-warde.com/2014/12/proof-republicans-racists-comes-president-obama/
- Fox News, who, even after the KKK history of Dylann Roof was known, and what he is reported to have said to his victims before killing them ("You rape our women and you're taking over our country, and you have to go."), broadcast it's anchor people and news commentators looking confused at the rest of the media (You know, the real world) referring to the incident as a racist hate crime. The Fox team quickly repeated their mantra that "it's an attack on Christians. It's a religious hate crime. Churches should arm their people with guns." Fox news, for decades, has been trying to promote their strange little universe, where racism doesn't exist, and the KKK is nothing more than a friendly Christian brotherhood.
http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/06/18/foxs-steve-doocy-its-extraordinary-that-charles/204043
All of these individuals and organizations have publicly given lip-service to racist ideas, which inspire, embolden, and motivate racists all over the country, whether they're police officers or 21-year-old losers like Dylann Roof. Some of the factually bankrupt ideas they have promoted, often using coded language, are:
- Mexicans are "Invading" the country.
- Illegal immigrants are "stealing" jobs.
- Black people are inclined to criminal behavior, because lots of them are in prison.
- Black people are more violent.
- Not showing proper respect to cops is justification for being shot to death.
- Obama wants to take money from white people and pay reparations to blacks (Yes, it was said, and by high-profile Republican elected officials)
- Obama will take away your guns.
- Obama has a deep-seated hated of white people.
- You'd better prepare for the coming race war.
You can't deny all of this evidence, or say that this is all just speculation or that none of these facts are connected. If you try to say that, you run into the problem of the sheer mass of the evidence. This article merely scratches the surface of America's hard-to-deny, long-running racism problem.
As a society, I feel that we really need more public shaming of racists. We should not allow racists, sexists, or homophobes to have platforms in the media where they can air their views, unchallenged, or try to cover-up their racism by trying to explain it using coded language, hidden behind a cloak of socioeconomic terminology. If we really are going to get rid of racism in this country, we need to intellectually kick racist politicians and commentators, along with radio and TV pundits in the face or balls with their own racist comments, and force them to either own up to it, or take the walk of shame (when they rip their mics off, and angrily storm out of the interview).
We don't need more political correctness. We need to develop the testicular fortitude to stand up to racists in politics and media, get involved in publicly shaming them, and publicly debating them, so their horrible views can be outed. We need to be mercilessly rude in calling their views what they are (racist, sexist, homophobic), and not letting them weasel out of what they said.
