But the deeper sin of the collective racism of our country that supports and nurtures killers like Dylann Roof...
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2015/06/jon-stewart-on-the-charleston-shooting-sort-of-like-a-prophet/
Unfortunately, Enns fails to enlighten the reader on how our country's collective racism supports and nurtures killers like Roof.
If that's the explanation for killers like Roof, what's the explanation for the Columbine killers? Or Timothy McVeigh? Or Ted Bundy? Or the Green River Killer? Or Jeffrey Dahmer. Or the black mother (Hyphernkemberly Dorvilier) who doused her newborn with lighter fluid, then burned it to death?
Is a collective ideology behind these acts? Why is that the first explanation we should reach for? Whatever happened to personal accountability? Why not say some people are just plain evil? Really evil?
Sometimes a culture or collective ideology can foster violence. We see that connection with Islamic terrorism. But that's because there's a pattern. It's not just isolated incidents or lone wolves.
Likewise, the KKK was a terrorist organization–manned by Democrats–that supported and nurtured killers like Roof. But that's before the KKK was defanged.
Does modern-day SC generally or Chas in particular suffer from "collective racism?" SC has an Indian-American governor. A black Republican senator who handily beat out white opponents, despite a majority white electorate.
The 10-term mayor of Chas is a Democrat. From 1982-2005, Chas had a black police chief.
What was the collective racism that allegedly nurtured Roof? Suppose he was influenced by Stormfront. That's hardly the face of systemic or institutional racism. Rather, that's a group on the margins of society.
In all likelihood, the system will charge Roof with nine counts of capital murder.
I work in an industry and profession where I have occasion to visit the North American and global HQ's of two very well known global corporations whose brand names will remain anonymous since they aren't germane to the topic.
ReplyDeleteBecause of the frequency of my visits through the years I've come to know many of my contacts personally, and we often chit-chat about work, families, current events, the usual water-cooler fare.
I've also come to understand as an "outsider" the inner workings of these organizations better than many of their newer employees.
Thus I happen to know about their pervasive - to the point of Orwellian - diversity and inclusion policies, procedures, and mandatory training they have instituted.
The PC culture engineers have been wildly successful in their efforts to shame and bully big multinational corporations into adopting their narrative, at least in North America. Other global regions are less affected in my experience.
But the funny thing is people are still people. I can't count the times I've been sitting in the visitor's area waiting for my contact to arrive around lunch time and watching groups of employees heading to eat.
Groups by race/ethnicity heading to lunch together. A group of Indians. A group of blacks. A group of Asians. A group of whites.
A white family in our church adopted a Chinese daughter as a baby. The child has been raised in American suburbia around virtually zero other ethnic Chinese. As the child has grown and come to understand her situation and background she's developed a zeal for China, and all things Chinese and has a fierce loyalty to China.
Granted this is all anecdotal. The point is that people generally tend towards tribalism, despite all amounts of outside conditioning.