Charleston Church Shooting Quotes

But as I reflected on what the president could have done or said differently, I also remembered what it felt like in the weeks following 9/11. When, for a few glorious weeks, we were all united as Americans. For a brief time, it didn’t seem to matter if you were black, white, or brown. We were all brothers and sisters because we were Americans. We shared certain values, a certain past, a certain goal. We haven’t really seen that since. Charlottesville, I knew, had the same potential to unite us. But Trump’s response derailed that opportunity. America didn’t need a stock statement. The country was pleading for a serious discussion about race, about our fundamental need to completely stamp out the Klan and neo-Nazis. I couldn’t help but think of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and the Charleston church shooting. Emmett Till and Jimmie Lee Jackson. Black Codes and the Southern Manifesto. Trump, I felt, had betrayed black America. And Jewish America. And American decency.

The infamous 2015 Charleston, South Carolina church shooting was originally going to be a college shooting. But Dylann Roof changed plans after realizing that the College of Charleston had armed guards.

The murder-suicide combination of school and other mass shootings is largely young white boys’ way of driving off the cliff at the end of mental health’s tortuous road. Consider three of the most notorious white male shooters: Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook), Elliott Rodgers (UC Santa Barbara), and Dylann Roof (Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston).

There was, in fact, a choice to be made in Charleston after the shootings at Mother Emanuel, a choice between conflagration and peace, between hatred and forgiveness. Once again, the Black community took the high road, the Way of Sorrows, and the streets did not erupt. This left more than a few conflicted, particularly those who already viewed Christianity as a tool of the oppressor class. No one wanted the elegant old city to burn. But neither did they want white Charleston (or white America, for that matter) to be exculpated. In their view, the expressions of forgiveness, the hand-holding across the bridge, the financial support for Mother Emanuel, all served the subversive purpose of making white people feel undeservedly better about themselves. They understood that their white neighbors bore no individual responsibility, and that many had responded with their hearts. But the narrative in Charleston nonetheless risked allowing them to presume absolution for the legacy of white supremacy that produced Dylann Roof and that still prevented Black Carolinians from achieving equity in most every sphere of life.