Motivation
That’s the word I’m hearing way too much this week. For those that don’t know, last week a shooter killed 9 people on a terrorist rampage in a famous black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Depending on who you chose to listen to, I’m sure you’ve heard that this was definitely about race, definitely NOT about race, has everything to do with guns, and at the same time has NOTHING to do with guns. I’ll get into what this about shortly, but the thing I’m hearing most is a shocking amount of people asking why this happened.
We know why this happened.
Only in America can a man walk into a church, declare he is there to shoot black people, proceed to shoot and kill 9 people, only for people to go, “Well, I don’t know what his motivations were…” We know his motivations. We know exactly why he did this, yet we have a media, a specific side of that media no less, eager to quickly wring their hands and wonder why. It’s baffling to me, but I fully understand why they’re doing it. The answer is racism.
Racism, you may ask? Yes. Racism. It’s what’s at the core of all of this. It’s no surprise the media outlets scoffing and promoting the idea that his motivations aren’t clear are right leaning. Their typical message is that racism is dead, and that racism is only still a thing because black people won’t stop talking about it. So this puts them in a ‘horrible’ situation, where instead of admitting racism is a thing, they’re choosing willful ignorance, or in same case, literally taking this act and redirecting it to make it about a faux oppression they’ve created. Thereby offending two different groups of people in the process.
So that’s the core of it. Fox News and whoever else is trying to pretend we don’t know why this guy did it are horribly racist. They can’t admit the attacks are racially motivated without being forced to admit racism is still a major problem in this country, which they don’t want to do.
Even better, some are trying to redirect this as religious persecution, trying to further the manufactured narrative that Christians in this country are oppressed. Steve Doocy, a very famous Fox talking head, said he thought it was extraordinary this was being called a hate crime, and was quick to bring up the religious aspect. An NRA board member actually blamed the pastor of the church. The pastor voted against a concealed carry law, and as such, this man, Charles L. Cotton, said this was his fault. Genuinely. None of this is really shocking. The NRA is very famous for basically using tragedy as an excuse to remind everyone that they’re allowed to have their guns.
Side note: If your first responses to a tragedy like this are, “DON’T YOU TAKE MY GUNS!” You might have some twisted priorities. Further, you aren’t John McClain, and this isn’t fucking Dodge City.
Even worse, SEVERAL people who want to run this country are just as bad, if not worse. Rick Santorum, a GOP hopeful in the 2016 election went one further, both playing up the unclear motivations, but going on to say it was clearly an assault on religious liberty because, “…what other rationale could there be?” Another GOP candidate, Rick Perry chastised Obama for bringing up guns, saying his MO is overreacting to ‘accidents’ like this. Lindsay Graham says the shooter may have been looking for Christians to kill. While Donald Trump got angry at Hillary Clinton for blaming him for the attacks, which she totally didn’t.
I literally don’t even know what to say to these guys. There’s no mystery here. It was a racially motivated act of domestic terrorism. To say otherwise is to be willfully ignorant. To say race was no part of this is a lie. To try and pin this on religious persecution is pathetic. To deny this was terrorism is cowardly. The worst part is that instead of talking, we’ve got people not just rushing, but flat out RUNNING to find any other motivation for these attacks. All so they can continue to pretend racism isn’t still a thing in this country.
It is. If you don’t think it is, fuck you. Doing everything possible to avoid talking about racism isn’t making anything better. The false rhetoric that by avoiding racism we’re eradicating it is wrong. It’s always been wrong, and this whole fiasco proves it. If you genuinely think sweeping racism under the rug is the solution, then fuck you too.
