Parry writes: "A 21-year-old white supremacist is charged with entering an
historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and murdering nine
black parishioners, merging two of America's great evils - gun violence and
racial injustice."
Charleston Emanuel AME Church. (photo: Getty)
Facing America's Great Evils
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
20 June 15
A 21-year-old white supremacist is charged with entering an historic black
church in Charleston, South Carolina, and murdering nine black parishioners,
merging two of America's great evils - gun violence and racial injustice.
But what can be done, asks Robert Parry.
The latest gun massacre - this time at a historic black church in
Charleston, South Carolina, and apparently driven by racial hatred - reminds
Americans how we all live at the forbearance of the next nut with easy
access to weapons that can efficiently kill us, our neighbors or our
children. Yet, we remain politically powerless to take even the smallest
step to stop this madness.
We also remain in political denial about one of America's original sins, the
cruel enslavement of blacks for the first quarter millennium of white
settlement of this continent, followed by another century of brutal racial
segregation, the residues of which we refuse to scrub from the corners of
our national behavior - fearing that doing so will get some pro-Confederate
white people mad.
In Arlington, Virginia, where I live, the political leadership can't even
find the will or courage to remove the name of Confederate President
Jefferson Davis from state roads that skirt Arlington Cemetery, which was
founded to bury Union soldiers, and that pass near historic black
neighborhoods in South Arlington, sending them an enduring message of who's
boss.
Davis's name was added to Southern sections of Route 1 in 1920 at the height
of the Ku Klux Klan's power and amid an upsurge in lynchings - and to Route
110 near the Pentagon in 1964 as a counterpoint to the Civil Rights Act.
Besides leading the secessionist slave states in rebellion, Davis signed an
order authorizing the execution of captured black soldiers fighting for the
Union, a practice that was employed in several battles near the end of the
Civil War.
Some of the victims of Davis's order were even trained at Camp Casey in what
is now Arlington County before those U.S. Colored Troops marched south to
engage General Robert E. Lee's army around the Confederate capital of
Richmond. I've often wondered what message Arlington County and the state of
Virginia think they're sending by honoring Davis. Are they saying that it's
all right to murder and subjugate black people? [See Consortiumnews.com's
"The Mystery of the Civil War's Camp Casey."]
The Charleston Murders
Of course, South Carolina, the heart of the South's slave system and the
instigator of the war to defend slavery, has its own messages conveyed to
its youth, including its proud display of the Confederate battle flag and
its endless promotion of "the boys in gray," including dressing up tour
guides in Confederate uniforms for visitors to Charleston.
Some of those messages appear to have sunk in for Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old
white supremacist who is charged with entering a Bible study class at the
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Wednesday night, sitting with
the black parishioners for an hour and then executing nine of them with a
.45-caliber pistol before uttering a racial epithet as he left.
The New York Times reported that, according to friends, Roof "voiced
virulently racist views and had talked recently about starting a new civil
war - even about shooting black people. Photographs of him wearing patches
with the flags of the former white supremacist governments of South Africa
and Rhodesia, and leaning against a car with Confederate States of America
on its license plate, drew millions of views online."
Yet, besides the usual handwringing that follows one of these gun tragedies,
there is little sign that anything of substance will change, either in
making firearms less promiscuously available to pretty much anyone who wants
them or in addressing the legacy of slavery, the ensuing century of terror
that enforced racial segregation, or the more recent experience of police
violence directed disproportionately at African-Americans.
What Came Be Done?
While the idea of reparations for slavery sends many American whites through
the roof in fury, there are substantive actions that government and private
industry could undertake, including major investments in the infrastructure
of predominantly black or brown communities, to make these neighborhoods
more inviting areas to live and invest.
Instead, the opposite generally occurs. Though the current Tea Party
dominance of the Republican Party makes any government spending on anything
- including maintenance of existing transportation services - almost
impossible, what spending that does get approved goes mostly to white areas,
using public funds to widen, not narrow, economic disparities.
In Arlington County, for instance, billions of dollars in public money have
been invested in two underground Metro lines (Orange and Silver) through
overwhelmingly white North Arlington, while a far more modest above-ground
Streetcar for racially diverse South Arlington was terminated by large
majorities of voters in North Arlington.
The racial mix of Arlington's schools have also shifted back toward the days
of segregation with some North Arlington schools nearly all white - and the
County lacking the political will to reverse these trends.
It's true that the problems of a wealthy county like Arlington -
representing the original land of the 100-square-mile District of Columbia
that spilled over the Potomac River and was later ceded back to Virginia -
pale by comparison to conditions in other urban areas, such as Baltimore or
Charleston where racial and police violence has recently flared. But the
point is that racial and ethnic discrimination remains part of the American
way, in big ways and small.
For that to change, there would have to be a transformation of the American
spirit, a recognition that past injustices must not be forgotten or even
just lamented but rather must become an inspiration for remedial action.
Then, these disgraceful gun tragedies and our long history of racial
violence would not just be a source of frustration and a sign of impotence,
but a motivation for a national rebirth that addresses past wrongs and lifts
up the nation as a whole.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Charleston Emanuel AME Church. (photo: Getty)
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/06/20/facing-americas-great-evils/https://co
nsortiumnews.com/2015/06/20/facing-americas-great-evils/
Facing America's Great Evils
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
20 June 15
A 21-year-old white supremacist is charged with entering an historic black
church in Charleston, South Carolina, and murdering nine black parishioners,
merging two of America's great evils - gun violence and racial injustice.
But what can be done, asks Robert Parry.
he latest gun massacre - this time at a historic black church in
Charleston, South Carolina, and apparently driven by racial hatred - reminds
Americans how we all live at the forbearance of the next nut with easy
access to weapons that can efficiently kill us, our neighbors or our
children. Yet, we remain politically powerless to take even the smallest
step to stop this madness.
We also remain in political denial about one of America's original sins, the
cruel enslavement of blacks for the first quarter millennium of white
settlement of this continent, followed by another century of brutal racial
segregation, the residues of which we refuse to scrub from the corners of
our national behavior - fearing that doing so will get some pro-Confederate
white people mad.
In Arlington, Virginia, where I live, the political leadership can't even
find the will or courage to remove the name of Confederate President
Jefferson Davis from state roads that skirt Arlington Cemetery, which was
founded to bury Union soldiers, and that pass near historic black
neighborhoods in South Arlington, sending them an enduring message of who's
boss.
Davis's name was added to Southern sections of Route 1 in 1920 at the height
of the Ku Klux Klan's power and amid an upsurge in lynchings - and to Route
110 near the Pentagon in 1964 as a counterpoint to the Civil Rights Act.
Besides leading the secessionist slave states in rebellion, Davis signed an
order authorizing the execution of captured black soldiers fighting for the
Union, a practice that was employed in several battles near the end of the
Civil War.
Some of the victims of Davis's order were even trained at Camp Casey in what
is now Arlington County before those U.S. Colored Troops marched south to
engage General Robert E. Lee's army around the Confederate capital of
Richmond. I've often wondered what message Arlington County and the state of
Virginia think they're sending by honoring Davis. Are they saying that it's
all right to murder and subjugate black people? [See Consortiumnews.com's
"The Mystery of the Civil War's Camp Casey."]
The Charleston Murders
Of course, South Carolina, the heart of the South's slave system and the
instigator of the war to defend slavery, has its own messages conveyed to
its youth, including its proud display of the Confederate battle flag and
its endless promotion of "the boys in gray," including dressing up tour
guides in Confederate uniforms for visitors to Charleston.
Some of those messages appear to have sunk in for Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old
white supremacist who is charged with entering a Bible study class at the
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Wednesday night, sitting with
the black parishioners for an hour and then executing nine of them with a
.45-caliber pistol before uttering a racial epithet as he left.
The New York Times reported that, according to friends, Roof "voiced
virulently racist views and had talked recently about starting a new civil
war - even about shooting black people. Photographs of him wearing patches
with the flags of the former white supremacist governments of South Africa
and Rhodesia, and leaning against a car with Confederate States of America
on its license plate, drew millions of views online."
Yet, besides the usual handwringing that follows one of these gun tragedies,
there is little sign that anything of substance will change, either in
making firearms less promiscuously available to pretty much anyone who wants
them or in addressing the legacy of slavery, the ensuing century of terror
that enforced racial segregation, or the more recent experience of police
violence directed disproportionately at African-Americans.
What Came Be Done?
While the idea of reparations for slavery sends many American whites through
the roof in fury, there are substantive actions that government and private
industry could undertake, including major investments in the infrastructure
of predominantly black or brown communities, to make these neighborhoods
more inviting areas to live and invest.
Instead, the opposite generally occurs. Though the current Tea Party
dominance of the Republican Party makes any government spending on anything
- including maintenance of existing transportation services - almost
impossible, what spending that does get approved goes mostly to white areas,
using public funds to widen, not narrow, economic disparities.
In Arlington County, for instance, billions of dollars in public money have
been invested in two underground Metro lines (Orange and Silver) through
overwhelmingly white North Arlington, while a far more modest above-ground
Streetcar for racially diverse South Arlington was terminated by large
majorities of voters in North Arlington.
The racial mix of Arlington's schools have also shifted back toward the days
of segregation with some North Arlington schools nearly all white - and the
County lacking the political will to reverse these trends.
It's true that the problems of a wealthy county like Arlington -
representing the original land of the 100-square-mile District of Columbia
that spilled over the Potomac River and was later ceded back to Virginia -
pale by comparison to conditions in other urban areas, such as Baltimore or
Charleston where racial and police violence has recently flared. But the
point is that racial and ethnic discrimination remains part of the American
way, in big ways and small.
For that to change, there would have to be a transformation of the American
spirit, a recognition that past injustices must not be forgotten or even
just lamented but rather must become an inspiration for remedial action.
Then, these disgraceful gun tragedies and our long history of racial
violence would not just be a source of frustration and a sign of impotence,
but a motivation for a national rebirth that addresses past wrongs and lifts
up the nation as a whole.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
