Fruits of hate

Twenty-one-year-old Dylann Roof had been brought up on a diet of hate in the American town of Charleston, South Carolina. He had confided in his room mate that he would one day start a race war. It was his historic duty to trigger the war between races because no one else had the courage to […]

Twenty-one-year-old Dylann Roof had been brought up on a diet of hate in the American town of Charleston, South Carolina. He had confided in his room mate that he would one day start a race war. It was his historic duty to trigger the war between races because no one else had the courage to do it. That was what his sick mind told him. That was the reality he had been nurtured on. He therefore decided to do his town the favour of killing its blacks in cold blood — nine of them who had embraced him when he showed up in their church’s bible study and shared the word of God with him unmindful that he was on a mission to dispatch them to their Unmade Maker. By the time Dylann escaped from the church with his blazing gun, nine African-American worshippers, lay dead.
Charleston was founded by English colonists in 1670, as a colonial seaport. It grew to become a wealthy city by the mid-eighteenth century. The city became famous as the place where Confederate soldiers fired on Union-occupied Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor in 1861. That signalled the beginning of the Civil War. The white population descended from former slave owners who tried to perpetuate the slave trade and whose descendants still have the mindset that they are racially superior. Many of them think the black man is at best sub-human and does not deserve to breathe the same air as they do.
Dylann Roof’s attack was just one in a long line of attacks of Black churches over the years. As far back as 1822 the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston was attacked for the first time. It was burnt to the ground. In 1963, four school girls were killed in a church basement in Birmingham, Alabama, following a racially motivated bombing. All through the 1990s, dozens of churches were set on fire across the American south. The practice of terrorising black churches seems to be a legacy handed over from one white generation to the next right from the slave trade era when black churches were often forbidden, or dismantled, sometimes burned.
“People have been talking about this as a terrible mistake, or tragedy. But when you think about it historically, it is not a mistake. It is actually a part of a system and a process of terrorising black people and black bodies, particularly in spaces that they have carved out as sanctuaries,” says Pierce, an associate professor of African American Religion at Princeton Theological Seminary.
As if to add insult to injury, Magistrate James B. Gosnell Jr. who presided over the bail hearing went beyond his brief to and tried to draw attention away from the woes of the victims’ families. In the unwarranted preachment, he sermonised: “There are victims on this young man’s side of the family… We must find it in our hearts at some point in time to not only help those who are victims but to help his family as well.” Really?!
And even now as you read this, the Confederate flag, symbol of hate, symbol of the slave trade, totem of the separation of man from fellow man flies high at the state house in Charleston. America, their America!
Suddenly, the country has reopened the debate on gun control all over again. Most of the whites feel they need guns to protect themselves and the wealth their ancestors made from the sweat of slaves. African Americans think otherwise, believing that only social justice and equity could guarantee lasting peace. At the last count there were 89 guns per 100 residents in the United States of America – the highest in the world.
Those whose ancestors made money from the slave trade and who are now making money from the armaments industry don’t want the gory picnic to end anytime soon. I could see the frustration in President Obama as he once again had to address the nation on the utterly senseless and preventable killing. The most powerful man in the world is confronted with the greediest racial bigots in creation. Many Ku Klux Klan loyalists masquerade as gun rights activists in the so-called land of liberty.
America is spending billions of dollars chasing terrorists all over the world while the real enemy depopulating the country is home grown. Can’t the USA remove the log in its own eyes before bothering about the specs in other people’s?
If the Confederate flag can be allowed to continue flying over Charleston to inspire other imps like Dylann, I don’t see why we can’t re-introduce the Black Power salute into the public arena. If those who should be ashamed of their ancestors’ crimes are not ashamed, neither should we shy away from the symbols of our heroic struggle for human dignity.
May I warn my fellow countrymen and women whose kids have formed a lynch-mob stereotyping, insulting and generally making hateful statements about other ethnic groups on social media sites, that their children may end up as Dylann Root. When you nurture your children on a diet of hate, don’t be surprised that they grow up to be monsters.

*Re: Amnesty International*

My comments on Amnesty International upset a reader, Dr. Shettima Ali, whose edited reaction is published below:

Your view on Amnesty International as presented in the Daily Trust last Monday is very unfortunate… The citizens of Borno, including the Borno Elders Forum have on a countless number of times raised the issue of extrajudicial killings and wanton destruction of shops, markets and homes by the military in Borno.  Our memory is still fresh on the role of the Military in the burning down of Baga, Bama towns, and Budum and Gamboru markets, etc. which are, in fact, just a few out of the number. Perhaps, we have also forgotten so soon our soldiers’ role in Zaki Biam, and Odi as we talk of their saintly sacrifices!… Any support for the military’s extrajudicial action or indeed benign silence is simply a support for genocide against the people of Borno. Let the Amnesty International Report be thoroughly investigated.

*Shettima A. Ali, Ph.D.* Managing Director/CEO, Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation
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