While there is a connection to the so-called Lost Cause on the surface of Dylann Roof’s disturbed mind, it is not an explanation for the tragedy. The reason for the bloodshed is psychiatric, not racial or political.
The notion that the Civil War and Reconstruction were foisted upon a defenseless South by a tyrannical central government retains considerable influence in a Southern ideology of persecution.
In the wake of the Charleston murders, the campaign against the Confederate flag has morphed into attacks on other historical vestiges of the Confederacy itself. And anyone who cares about history should be alarmed by that.
The burgeoning movement to take down the Confederate flag in South Carolina and other states is an important first step. Even after it is gone, however, the public display of history in South Carolina will remain biased and one-dimensional.
Furling the statehouse flag may bring temporary relief to South Carolinians, but what we truly need to bury is the gauzy fiction that the antebellum South was in any way benign, or that slavery and white supremacy weren’t the cornerstone of the Confederacy.
A count by a research center found that non-Muslim extremists have been far more lethal than Islamic militants on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001, running counter to public perception.
What prompted him? Public conversations about the shooting were generally devoid of the kind of historical knowledge that frames contemporary racial violence and its deep roots. Twitter's helping.
Americans tend to view attacks like the mass murder in Charleston as isolated hate crimes, but many are connected to a broader movement, says the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Some have speculated that Roof chose the historic black church—and even the date of his horrific deed—because it was co-founded by Denmark Vesey, a former slave who was hanged for planning to lead a slave revolt in Charleston on June 16, 1822.
