On Wednesday evening, a white South Carolina man whose photos showed him to have stitched the flag of apartheid South Africa to his coat and who sported a
Confederate States of America license plate on his car went into one of the oldest and most famous black churches in America and murdered nine black Americans, telling them according to witnesses that he was there "
to shoot black people" because "
you rape our women and you're taking over our country, and you have to go."
Despite this, prominent conservative political voices remain baffled as to what the motive could have been. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who continues to defend flying a Confederate flag on capitol grounds, issued a statement that we would "never understand what motivates" someone to do such a thing. By morning, though, it was agreed: it could not possibly be about race. The man who told racist jokes and who placed symbols of white supremacy on his jacket and a Confederate plate on his car walked into one of America's most famous black churches because he didn't like Christians.
"Extraordinarily, they called it a hate crime," [Fox and Friends stain on humanity Steve Doocy] said in an interview with a pastor Thursday morning. "And some look at it as, well, it's because it was a white guy, apparently, and a black church. But you made a great point just a moment ago about the hostility toward Christians, and it was in a church, so maybe that's what it was about."
This, then, would become a theme. It wasn't about racism because it's never about racism. The man who said he was there "to shoot black people" was not against black Americans, he was targeting Christianity. South Carolina's Senator Lindsey Graham fessed up that while perhaps race may have been a factor, "
There are people out there looking for Christians to kill them. This is a mean time we live in.” Fellow presidential candidate Rick Santorum took it further, proving that there is nothing that a man of deep convictions cannot twist so that it best
supports those convictions.
“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.”
Yes, that was it. The shooter had a deep hatred of
religious liberty.
Head below the fold for more on racism not really being about racism.
Fellow candidate Rand Paul considers himself a libertarian and a defender of the all-holy Second Amendment. He was quick to note that These Things Happen, but that we oughtn't think we should do a damn thing about them.
“There’s a sickness in our country,” he continued. “There’s something terribly wrong, but it isn’t going to be fixed by your government.”
Marco Rubio spoke to the Faith and Freedom Coalition Policy Conference today, giving a speech in which the mass murder of congregants in a black church
didn't come up. He did, however, emphasize the importance of
upholding the Second Amendment to those gathered to hear him talk about "Faith" and "Freedom".
It's hard to imagine a more dismissive treatment of the victims of a mass murder than to studiously ignore their very identity, the very thing that they were explicitly targeted and killed for, because your own ideology would prefer the truth be something different. To go even farther, and claim that their murder was not even about them, it was about your group, and how their murders prove how your group has been victimized. At least have the withered decency to acknowledge that the openly racist murderer was a racist murderer—that the man who said he was there to kill black Americans was, indeed, there to kill his victims for being black Americans. Do not give bullshit statements about your sympathies for the community when you aren't willing to even name the "community" being targeted.
And on and on it goes. Oh, it just so happens that black Americans get shot in disproportionate numbers by American police forces. Oh, it just so happens that black Americans make up a conspicuously improbable majority of those targeted in the drug "wars." Oh, it just so happens that a large percentage of black Americans find themselves living the communities where their parents were required to live because of policies against granting black Americans mortgages in the "other" communities only a few short decades back. It's just an uncanny coincidence that the justification the murderer used when murdering black Americans in a black church, because "you rape our women," was used earlier in the week by one of the far more "respectable" presidential "candidates" as reason why another minority group were indecent people who should not be welcomed here. It's all a great big damn coincidence.
An American racist who believed black Americans should be violently segregated or expunged went into a black Southern church and murdered the people inside. Again. Just like all the other times. If you are running a news show and cannot speak of that, get up and leave the set. If you are running for high political office and professed to be stumped as to how this could happen—again after a very long history of it happening—abandon your campaign and resign your posts. You have nothing of value to us. Either recognize America as it is or, for the love of God and country, shut up.
Incidentally, you may be wondering where the Fox News and Lindsey Graham interpretation of these events as attacks on "Christians", rather than on black Americans, was so quickly hatched. You need not wonder: it was first spawned in the white supremacist groups themselves. That it elevated itself in a single night to become a conservative media talking point is, presumably, yet another one of those uncanny coincidences. And yes, in South Carolina today the Confederate flag still flies proudly on the statehouse grounds.