By Charles C. W. Cooke
Friday, June 19, 2015
The young man who, on Wednesday evening of this week,
shot nine black parishioners of Charleston’s Emmanuel AME Church, was motivated
by pronounced racial animus. Explaining to the murdered why he was taking their
lives, he told them stupidly, “I have to do it. You rape our women, and you are
taking over our country. And you have to go.” He was, his former roommate
informed the press with a disgraceful understatement of tone, “big into segregation
and stuff” — intent, even, upon starting “a civil war.” A much-circulated
photograph, taken appropriately next to a filthy swamp, depicts him wearing a
jacket that boasts two unmistakable signs of white supremacy: an apartheid-era
flag from South Africa, and the segregationist colors that once flew
ignominiously over Rhodesia. There, as now, he resembles a silly and angry
child — a fool and an ignoramus who has managed to adopt as his own some of the
worst instincts within our culture.
Since the news broke, it has become fashionable to play
up just how prominent those instincts supposedly are. This is a mistake. What
happened in Charleston was a tragedy — no, an abomination — and it
understandably served to reopen some of America’s deepest historical fault
lines. But it was not part of a contemporary pattern, and for this we should be
grateful, not frustrated. Whatever one believes is the modern value of the
Confederate battle flag — and for my part I see little at all to admire — the
interpretation that the killer appears to have indulged puts him out on a limb.
Symbols do indeed matter, and Ta-Nehisi Coates is correct when he concludes
that there is no means by which the stars and bars can be washed of their
heritage. But I cannot endorse the implication that others have submitted in
concert — namely, that we can infer any good answer to the question “why” from
the relative ubiquity of a piece of cloth. It is not 1861 in Charleston, and
the killer does not speak for the city. Rather, he is a throwback; an anomaly;
an isolated and reviled recrudescence. In 2015, the Declaration of Independence
has been restored to its rightful place at the heart of American life, and the
dissenters have been pushed righteously to the margins. That the shooter saw fit
to stage such a painful attack on history and on progress is alarming to us
precisely because it is so rare. Happily, the man who would have started a
“race war” found no compatriots to help him in his quest. We should avoid
granting him an ill-deserved victory by electing to indulge his premise.
Alas, across media new and old, a dangerous — and related
— meme has reared its head. “When Muslims attack Jewish synagogues,
anti-Semitism is definitely to blame,” runs an indicative line from CNN’s Sally
Kohn, “but white guy shoots up black church and nah, not racism?!” This
interpretation is an utterly perplexing one. Before the killer had even been
captured, the federal Department of Justice had declared in no uncertain terms
that it would be investigating the murders as a “hate crime.” And, once the
painful details became clear, the whole country joined it in condemnation. At
the Daily Beast today, Anna Marie Cox pretends that, in the early hours at
least, both “the GOP” and “leading conservatives” denied that the murders had
been the product of racism. Predictably, she provides no evidence of denial
anywhere in her piece. Likewise, today’s criticisms of Jeb Bush appear to be
wholly unfounded. What can be attributed to initial confusion or to reflexive
uncertainty — or even to crass omission – should not be attributed to malice.
Why, one wonders, would anyone wish to crack our united front with
insinuations?
On The Nightly Show yesterday, Larry Wilmore made the
same mistake, explaining to his audience of clapping seals that Fox News “makes
my f*cking head explode.” “With all of [the] evidence” available, Wilmore
contended, still conservatives would not accept “that racial stuff” had gone
down. This was a cheap shot at the time that it was fired. But, had he waited a
few more hours, he would have seen just how cheap it was. Running through his
“talking points memo,” favored boogeyman Bill O’Reilly cast the attack as
“terrorism” and concluded bluntly that “skin color seems to be the motivator.”
The assault, O’Reilly proposed, is “no different than what ISIS and al-Qaeda
does targeting civilians because of who they are.” “This is not a tragedy,” he
added, “this is an execution designed to terrorize people just like the Boston
Marathon bombing and the mass murder at Fort Hood, Texas.” Unlike with much of
the reaction to the shooting at Charlie Hebdo, there was no impending “but.”
Here at National Review, all our commentary has reflected
the same attitude. In our first post noting the shooting, Patrick Brennan
reported that “the suspect appears to be a white nationalist,” suggested that
“it’s hard to imagine a reason not to call it an act of terrorism,” and wrote
extensively about the “symbolic significance” of the church itself. While
making it clear that details were thin on the ground, Mona Charen recorded that
the killer had apparently been heard uttering “vile, racist sentiments as he
(allegedly) murdered innocent, defenseless people.” Responding to the early
reactions, meanwhile, David French submitted that we were dealing with “a
terrorist act in a church, one apparently motivated by racial hatred.” Such
attitudes were reflective of the whole. On Twitter, on Facebook, and on the
many other tools of expression that beep and buzz through our national trials,
I have seen only a handful of separatists, all of whom have been immediately
shamed for their abnegation.
The brutal divisions within American political life are a
fact that is much lamented by the champions of unity, even to the extent that
legitimate civic disagreement is often held to be a vice. Yesterday we saw a
rare moment of unanimity and accord, replete with a linguistic solidarity that
is peculiar in the modern era. Apparently, some people just can’t take “yes”
for an answer.
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