The mysteriousness of Dylann Roof’s motivations for allegedly murdering a room full of African-Americans, rated on a scale of 1 through 10, is zero. Roof has been described by people who knew him as obsessed with racial hatred, has been photographed with racist symbolism, told his victims he planned to murder them because of their race, and even let one live specifically so that she could let the world know the reason for his crime. It is entirely possible that some form of mental illness or adverse life event caused Roof to embrace violent racism, but there is zero doubt that racism directly motivated his actions.
The rest of this column is about how Republicans, including presidential candidates, have avoided saying that this the motivation for this mass murder was racism. A companion column provides a sampling of what candidates did say. As Chiat points out, they didn't have to handle it this way. Call it racism, say it has no place in American society, disassociate yourself from these views. This used to be the minimum political standard. Not any more. The Republican party is very close to officially admitting it is a party for racists. I suppose they gets some points for acknowledging the truth.
Trending today is the Confederate flag--move it from the South Carolina capitol, take it off the shelves of Walmart, etc. In part this looks like a mix of guilty conscience, misdirection, a way to talk about this without talking about this, and an Internet-fed instant fad. We'll see.
President Obama spoke some pointed words on racism in an unusual interview--a podcast recorded in a garage. Here's a good story on it, here are some quotes, here's the link. Here's another story/summary in the New Yorker.
Fifty-five per cent of the black population of the United States resides in the South. A hundred and five Southern counties have a population that is at least fifty per cent black. The idea of the Confederate flag as a symbol of Southern pride presumes that there was some universally accessible virtue associated with the circumstances under which that flag came into existence. The more honest assessment would preface the word “Southern” with the adjective “white.”
As for the flurry of other announcements today, there seems to be a degree of "we feel guilty but we can't think of anything else to do" apparently motivating retailers, who get positive publicity from people most likely to buy their products, and yet, as the above linked story concludes:
"When I spoke to Anton Gunn, a former state legislator who ran Obama’s primary campaign in South Carolina, he asked, “If you take the flag down tomorrow, what is going to substantively change in the lives of black people and people affected by inequality in South Carolina?”
The situation in South Carolina has become a tragedy wrapped in an irony. The Confederate flag was erected as a pandering symbol to a segment of the white population who could expect little else from the government. Taking it down offers a kind of equality—an equality of emptiness—to black South Carolinians."
Which is to say that Republicans aren't going to address substantive changes, nor in most cases support and implement government programs that address the needs of blacks as well as others, like Medicaid and Obamacare. But apart from that, I suppose this flag frenzy could be the symbolic beginning of a new round of addressing residual racism as reflected in institutions. And probably it will be taken too far, so that eventually some kid who brings a Confederate flag to school for history class will get expelled.
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