Confessions of a 20-Something White Man from SC

I’m sure you’ve heard by now about the tragedy that occurred on Wednesday night in my hometown of Charleston, SC. As the reactions poured out on social media, I became increasingly uncomfortable as people entered an almost ritualistic process of putting distance between themselves and the perpetrator, Dylann Roof.

I saw the same thing happen when white police officer Michael Slager killed Walter Scott, a black man, in North Charleston. Then I couldn’t quite put my finger on what made me uncomfortable, but now I understand—my fellow South Carolinians are unwilling to accept that we have created a culture where this sort of tragedy happens. We make them out to be ‘one bad cop’ or ‘one troubled youth’ instead of sons of South Carolina who really aren’t that different from us.

Take, for example, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who defiantly declared at a prayer vigil on Thursday, “What happened in that church is not the people of South Carolina… We are a state of faith, we are as state of prayer, we are a state of love.”

But I’d like to take a moment to say in fact, Governor Haley, we are a state that raised a white supremacist that entered the prayer service of an historic black church and murdered nine black people.

Most people immediately proclaimed how different this killer was from them, but as I took in the story, I was struck by how much we have in common. I fit the initial description released by the police: “white male, early 20s, clean shaven, slight build.” (I think I have a better haircut than Dylann, but I’ll let you decide.)

Kind of a strange reaction, right? Of all South Carolinians that look like Dylann and me, I probably have the most right to distance myself from him. I completed high school. I went away to a fancy, liberal college. I moved to Philadelphia (Yankee territory!). I’m a member of a black church. I live in a black neighborhood and work at an organization that serves a largely poor black community.

Indeed, there is great distance between the path that Dylann took and the one I’ve followed. But still, I couldn’t help but feel like we weren’t all that different.

For starters, Dylann and I were educated according to the same state standards, which include SC history. I love history, so I soaked it in. I would have remembered if we ever learned about the black freedom struggle in South Carolina, for instance about the Denmark Vesey slave revolt and the burning of Mother Emanuel AME Church. It wasn’t until college that I had the opportunity to explore the South Carolina Civil Rights movement. Black history wasn’t taught in my SC classrooms.

And I grew up misunderstanding black culture that was all around me. Each week we drove past an AME church on the way to our (almost exclusively white) church. And every so often I would say, “I just don’t understand their name. How can you be Methodist and Episcopal?” Dylann Roof would probably have agreed when I rolled my eyes at such an ignorant name that only black people would come up with. (If you know the history of the AME Church, you recognize the irony of my thinking.[1])

And finally, I confess that as a kid I was kind of obsessed with Confederate war history. I had books about Confederate history, a replica CSA soldier’s cap, and for an elementary school art project I used paper pulp to create a Confederate flag. Like Dylann, I grew up celebrating that flag as a symbol of the glory days of the South. And why shouldn’t I? When I was a kid it still flew high above the state capitol building.[2]

White South Carolina, we have rushed to put distance between ourselves and Dylann Roof, to say that his actions don’t represent what we stand for. I’m not afraid to say that Dylann Roof and Preston Hogue sound pretty similar; we were raised in the same white South Carolina culture! We may want distance from Dylann, but if we’re honest we can see a little bit of Dylann Roof in all of us.

We must confess that Dylann Roof is a white South Carolinian. And we must confess that South Carolina is a state where we would rather celebrate the glory days of the South than admit they were purchased with black lives.

…a state where our children only learn the white side of history.

…a state where we would really prefer our kids to not have interracial relationships.

…a state where we ignore black history and culture.

…a state where we would rather everyone have a gun than everyone have healthcare.

…a state where symbols of hatred are revered, defended, and celebrated.

We must confess that South Carolina is a state that raised a white supremacist that entered the prayer service of an historic black church and murdered nine black people.

White people of South Carolina, let this tragedy be a wake-up call so that we can truly become the state Governor Haley and all decent people long for, “a state of love.” But let’s not deny where we are right now as we work toward that goal:

We are a state that raised a racist mass murderer. Until we own that fact, we will raise another one and face this tragedy again.

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[1] The AME Church took its name from the white denomination they left—the Methodist Episcopal Church (now United Methodist Church)—because of discrimination against blacks.

[2] At the time of writing, the flag still flies on the grounds of the state capitol after a long fight to have it removed from atop the building. [Update: the flag was removed from statehouse grounds on July 10, 2015.]

Our Struggle

"This is their experiential moment, that moment when the weight becomes too much, when the abstract becomes real, when expectations of continual, inexorable progress slam into the back of a slow-moving reality, plagued by fits and starts and sometimes prone to occasional regressions."

Recently I read these words in a New York Times op-ed column by Charles M. Blow that captures a realization I've had while participating in the demonstrations sparked by Ferguson and Staten Island. Blow writes that he grew up, like most of us, learning about the black freedom struggle that has existed in this country since its founding. But he didn't have a connection to it until the killings of Rodney King and James Byrd, Jr. Those events awakened in him the fervor of the Civil Rights Movement and showed him their relevance in his own day.

Just a few months old in 1991 when Rodney King was killed, I learned about the tragic event in the same way that I did Jim Crow: in history class. And although I've learned a lot about what modern systemic racism looks like, including mass incarceration, I haven't yet felt the fervor and urgency of the black freedom struggle that has at points gripped this nation and moved it to action, such as when slavery and then Jim Crow ended.

That fervor has again been awakened in this country, and my generation is once again taking up arms for true equality. And I feel it.

To participate in this movement I recently attended "Strange Fruit: Seven Last Words of Seven Black Lives," an event hosted by POWER (Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower, and Rebuild), an interfaith group of congregations committed to justice in Philadelphia. The main feature of "Strange Fruit" was seven sermons reflecting on the last words of black men and women whose known killers (most of whom were police officers) went unpunished. The service also included worship, poetry, prayer, an update from those on the ground in Ferguson, and demands POWER is issuing in response to such unpunished killings.

The event opened up to me in a mysterious way the deep and long struggle of black people in this country. As I listened to poetic words and sounds, submitted to culturally different worship styles, and heard a people cry out to their God, I realized that I had stepped into an ancient struggle, a pain, a perseverance that has endured hundreds of years. We mourned the loss of people slain for their black skin, a dirge that has been sung over and over. We lamented the reality that black sons and daughters could be next. In the prayers, sermons, and songs I saw the resilience of the black soul and felt its strength, its warm embrace, and heard its deep, melodic refrain.

I also witnessed a mobilization--people organizing, demanding, crying out for justice to the powers that be. It was a collision of history with the present struggle. The demands, although distinct in their particularities, have been the same for centuries. And here they were in my context, in reaction to current events, sometimes made by people my age. Everything seemed at once new and ancient--like the gurgling of molten lava to form a new island.

See me pictured at "Strange Fruit" in bottom right corner.

There I stood in the middle of the ancient struggle. Suddenly it was not just the struggle from ages past, but it was of my time, of my generation and, though I am not black, it was mine.

As my generation boldly steps forward to claim the struggle in a new way and determines to no longer be dragged backward, we can find hope in the advances of generations past, the faithfulness of God to respond to the cries of His people. Blow titled his article "This Is Your Moment." Indeed, this moment is ours, but it carries the momentum of a few hundred years. Let's push forward like so many before us in the ancient struggle against racism--our struggle.