Coates writes: "Killing Dylann Roof does absolutely nothing to ameliorate
the conditions that brought him into being in the first place. The hammer of
criminal justice is the preferred tool of a society that has run out of
ideas. In this sense, Roof is little more than a human sacrifice to The Gods
of Doing Nothing."
Dylann Roof. (photo: Reuters)
Killing Dylann Roof
By Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic
30 May 16
A year after Obama saluted the families for their spirit of forgiveness, his
administration seeks the death penalty for the Charleston shooter.
On Tuesday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced she would seek the
death penalty for Dylann Roof. It has not been a year since Roof walked into
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and murdered nine black people as
they worshipped. Roof justified this act of terrorism in chillingly familiar
language-"You rape our women and you're taking over our country." The public
display of forgiveness offered to Roof by the families of the victims
elicited bipartisan praise from across the country. The president saluted
the families for "an expression of faith that is unimaginable but that
reflects the goodness of the American people." How strange it is to see that
same administration, and these good people, who once saluted the forgiveness
of Roof, presently endorse his killing.
Dylann Roof's act stood in a long and lethal tradition of homegrown American
terrorism stretching back to the Civil War. The response to this terrorism
that the powers-that-be tend to endorse is nonviolence-love, forgiveness,
and turning the other cheek. The symbol of this approach is, of course,
Martin Luther King Jr. One problem with using King in this way is that the
actual King had an annoying habit of preaching nonviolence, whether it was
convenient or not. Whereas American power generally regards nonviolence as a
means of cynically enforcing order, King believed protesters should be
exemplars of nonviolence, but not its unique employers.
There are defensible reasons why the American state-or any state-would find
King's ethic hard to live up to. States are violent. The very establishment
of government, the attempt to safeguard a group of people deemed citizens or
subjects, is always violent. In America, a president is the commander in
chief. Anyone who voted for Obama necessarily voted for violence.
Furthermore, there is indisputable evidence that violence sometimes works.
The greatest affirmation of civil rights in American
history-emancipation-was accomplished at gun-point.
But one has to be careful here not to fall into the trap of lionizing
killing, of pride in the act of destroying people even for just ends.
Moreover, even if nonviolence isn't always the answer, King reminds us to
work for a world where it is. Part of that work is recognizing when our
government can credibly endorse King's example. Sparing the life of Dylann
Roof would be such an instance-one more credible than the usual
sanctimonious homilies delivered in his name. If the families of Roof's
victims can find the grace of forgiveness within themselves; if the
president can praise them for it; if the public can be awed by it-then why
can't the Department of Justice act in the spirit of that grace and resist
the impulse to kill?
Perhaps because some part of us believes in nonviolence not as an ideal
worth striving for, but as a fairy tale passed on to the politically weak.
The past two years have seen countless invocations of nonviolence to shame
unruly protestors into order. Such invocations are rarely made to shame
police officers who choke men to death over cigarettes and are sent back out
onto the beat. And the same political officials will stand up next January
and praise King even as they act contrary to his words. "Capital punishment
is against the best judgment of modern criminology," wrote King, "and, above
all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God."
Moreover, killing Roof does absolutely nothing to ameliorate the conditions
that brought him into being in the first place. The hammer of criminal
justice is the preferred tool of a society that has run out of ideas. In
this sense, Roof is little more than a human sacrifice to The Gods of Doing
Nothing. Leave aside actual substantive policy. In a country where
unapologetic slaveholders and regressive white supremacists still, at this
late date, adorn our state capitals and our highest institutions of
learning, it is bizarre to kill a man who acted in their spirit. And killing
Roof, like the business of the capital punishment itself, ensures that
innocent people will be executed. The need to extract vengeance cannot
always be exact. It is all but certain that a disproportionate number of
those who pay for this lack of precision will not look like Dylann Roof.
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Dylann Roof. (photo: Reuters)
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/dylann-roof-death-penalt
y/484274/http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/dylann-roof-dea
th-penalty/484274/
Killing Dylann Roof
By Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic
30 May 16
A year after Obama saluted the families for their spirit of forgiveness, his
administration seeks the death penalty for the Charleston shooter.
n Tuesday, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced she would seek the
death penalty for Dylann Roof. It has not been a year since Roof walked into
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and murdered nine black people as
they worshipped. Roof justified this act of terrorism in chillingly familiar
language-"You rape our women and you're taking over our country." The public
display of forgiveness offered to Roof by the families of the victims
elicited bipartisan praise from across the country. The president saluted
the families for "an expression of faith that is unimaginable but that
reflects the goodness of the American people." How strange it is to see that
same administration, and these good people, who once saluted the forgiveness
of Roof, presently endorse his killing.
Dylann Roof's act stood in a long and lethal tradition of homegrown American
terrorism stretching back to the Civil War. The response to this terrorism
that the powers-that-be tend to endorse is nonviolence-love, forgiveness,
and turning the other cheek. The symbol of this approach is, of course,
Martin Luther King Jr. One problem with using King in this way is that the
actual King had an annoying habit of preaching nonviolence, whether it was
convenient or not. Whereas American power generally regards nonviolence as a
means of cynically enforcing order, King believed protesters should be
exemplars of nonviolence, but not its unique employers.
There are defensible reasons why the American state-or any state-would find
King's ethic hard to live up to. States are violent. The very establishment
of government, the attempt to safeguard a group of people deemed citizens or
subjects, is always violent. In America, a president is the commander in
chief. Anyone who voted for Obama necessarily voted for violence.
Furthermore, there is indisputable evidence that violence sometimes works.
The greatest affirmation of civil rights in American
history-emancipation-was accomplished at gun-point.
But one has to be careful here not to fall into the trap of lionizing
killing, of pride in the act of destroying people even for just ends.
Moreover, even if nonviolence isn't always the answer, King reminds us to
work for a world where it is. Part of that work is recognizing when our
government can credibly endorse King's example. Sparing the life of Dylann
Roof would be such an instance-one more credible than the usual
sanctimonious homilies delivered in his name. If the families of Roof's
victims can find the grace of forgiveness within themselves; if the
president can praise them for it; if the public can be awed by it-then why
can't the Department of Justice act in the spirit of that grace and resist
the impulse to kill?
Perhaps because some part of us believes in nonviolence not as an ideal
worth striving for, but as a fairy tale passed on to the politically weak.
The past two years have seen countless invocations of nonviolence to shame
unruly protestors into order. Such invocations are rarely made to shame
police officers who choke men to death over cigarettes and are sent back out
onto the beat. And the same political officials will stand up next January
and praise King even as they act contrary to his words. "Capital punishment
is against the best judgment of modern criminology," wrote King, "and, above
all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God."
Moreover, killing Roof does absolutely nothing to ameliorate the conditions
that brought him into being in the first place. The hammer of criminal
justice is the preferred tool of a society that has run out of ideas. In
this sense, Roof is little more than a human sacrifice to The Gods of Doing
Nothing. Leave aside actual substantive policy. In a country where
unapologetic slaveholders and regressive white supremacists still, at this
late date, adorn our state capitals and our highest institutions of
learning, it is bizarre to kill a man who acted in their spirit. And killing
Roof, like the business of the capital punishment itself, ensures that
innocent people will be executed. The need to extract vengeance cannot
always be exact. It is all but certain that a disproportionate number of
those who pay for this lack of precision will not look like Dylann Roof.
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http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
