Instead of discussing the hard issues which enabled the Charleston shooting, America has been consumed by the debate over the Confederate flag.
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A domestic terrorist who abhorred African-Americans walked into a South Carolina church last week populated by the aforementioned race and murdered them.
Dylann Roof, the 21 year-old White male gunman, is an evil and uneducated person who did an awful, racist act so shocking that it has consumed the news cycle for an entire week.
But instead of discussing the hard issues, like what enabled the shooting—cultures, attitudes, laws, frowned upon social norms and biased media outlets who distort reality beyond recognition—the country has been consumed by a dialogue about the Confederate flag. This dialogue has also completely ignored the fact that the American flag, a pride and joy for many, also evokes memories for some of slavery, oppression, mass incarceration and unmitigated police violence, but that’s neither here or there, I guess.
At issue in this article is the fact that a flag was not the cause for the terrorist act which killed nine people. The Confederate flag, in the context of the Charleston shooting, is as relevant in my opinion, as the brand of condoms Santa Claus prefers when making love to a reindeer—it’s that insanely irrelevant and abstract.
What we should be talking about, but we’re too afraid to, is the fact that America—while not what it used to be—is still very much a racist country. A country that every day, and without consequence, enables or promotes discrimination, segregation and white privilege. A privilege which includes the presumption of innocence, regardless of the evidence or statistics which should require cynicism, at the very least.
A clear example of this can be found in a candid statement often repeated by the likely next Mayor of Philadelphia, Mr. Jim Kenney, a White man who severed as an At-Large City Councilman for more than two decades.
“My son has never been stopped-and-frisked,” Mr. Kenney told me after the signing of a law which decriminalized marijuana, and again before he spoke to a crowd of roughly 50 people in a South Philadelphia church.
What’s remarkable is that Mr. Kenney’s son, who’s in his mid-20s, and those who look like him, are more likely to commit violence crimes and domestic terrorist attacks. But these same men are less likely to be stopped repeatedly by police for looking suspicious, or have their face appear on the evening news for the crime report.
Why is that? Multiple reasons exist for why Whites should equally, if not at a greater rate, be scrutinized for their criminality.
For example, according to a study by the New America Foundation, White Americans are the greatest terror threat to the United States.
A review of “terror” attacks on US soil since Sept. 11, 2001, found that most were carried out by radical anti-government groups or white supremacists, reports Raw Story, which also noted almost twice as many people have died in attacks by radical right-wing groups in America than have died in attacks by Muslim extremists.
Can we prevent more Charleston shootings? Maybe … but we’ll never know unless we, as a country, actually try. We could start by demanding police departments pursue real criminals and terrorists in an effort to prevent real tragedies. We should no longer allow them to harass poor people in an effort to prevent jaywalking, cigarettes from being sold without the government getting its slice, and swimming in a perceived white-only pool.
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Thanks for reading. Until next time, I’m Flood the Drummer® & I’m Drumming for JUSTICE!™
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