Virginia shooter and destructive payback psychology

https://gma.yahoo.com/virginia-shooting-suspect-vester-flanagan-did-leading-air-213449674--abc-news-topstories.html#

Like the shooting of NYC cops after Ferguson, if this violence is tied to race and Charleston, it blows my mind. I wonder what these shooters want for their legacy, or what they want the public to take away from their crimes. Maybe Flanagan's manifesto will shed some light, but his atrocious actions pretty much invalidate anything insightful he may have written.

Although racial violence is still vastly disproportionately black victims and white perpetrators, events like this may just perpetuate the stereotype that young black men are all thugs and the black people you work with are unstable and could go off on you any moment. Those perceptions of course do great daily harm to African Americans as a whole - even if it's mostly subtle aggressions that are imperceptible to non-blacks.

I suppose there is a fixation in the American psyche (or human nature in general) about getting payback and taking matters into our own hands. If others have hurt you or those you associate with, how is it is "justice" to commit violence against totally unrelated people who just happen to be of the same broad, arbitrary social category or geography? When Hamas sends some rockets into Israel, why does the IDF bomb and bulldoze homes and hospitals full of women and kids who never touched a rocket? Does that make them feel better, or feel safer? Of the 45M blacks in the US, did Roof think that killing 9 would "set things right" for Obama being president and all the other terrible things blacks have done to whites? And then Flanagan killing 2 whites 300 miles away from SC somehow settles that score too? Obviously this lunacy never ends, so such beliefs should never materialize into action in the first place.

Black lives matter vs. All lives matter is a false debate

I thought this piece was pretty good: http://fusion.net/story/170591/the-next-time-someone-says-all-lives-matter-show-them-these-5-paragraphs/

Maybe this is a microcosm of the overall race impasse in America. Blacks and minorities want equal treatment as guaranteed by our Constitution (not to mention human decency). They are not calling for special treatment. Even the arguments in support of slavery reparations are not excessive and have plenty of precedent.

However, I think some whites dislike the race debate because (1) no one likes feeling blamed as the bad guy, or enjoying an unfair latent advantage (especially in a nation of "self-made" individualistic success), and (2) they get turned off by what they view as blacks/minorities already getting special treatment (welfare, immigration amnesty, affirmative action, political correctness, etc.) and wanting more. Of course the evidence suggests that such an attitude is misguided, and ignores the obvious facts that some minorities have worse outcomes for health/wealth/edu/incarceration/etc. vs. whites even when you control for other variables.

So "black lives matter" can be misinterpreted as "blacks are more important." Which is of course not the point of the moment, and not what the supporters believe. The whole genesis of the moment is the fact that blacks are treated as second-class (or worse) by many measures in the US, are fed up about it, and want to raise awareness. I don't think that is unreasonable. But then you get the white privilege backlash (no, only "we" are allowed to be special!), and they criticize the movement by saying "shouldn't all lives matter?" Yes, they should! But you're not doing it, and the victims are disproportionately the poor and darker skinned. So when those lives get equal respect (validated by actions and data), then the "black lives" folks will gladly disband I think.

I guess it is related to whites' "fear of blacks" again. Fear of them getting more power (even equal power is a threat), uprising, and taking over (hence no traction on slavery reparations). Obama in the WH was bad enough. Why can't they be meek and respectful like the Charleston blacks after the shooting? Well some civil rights folks have criticized the Charleston response as conditioned by decades of southern blacks' fixation with needing to please whites and be accepted by them (even though they never will).

But here is another example of the empathy deficit. Would the critics of "black lives matter" just quietly accept it when their communities get raw deal after raw deal (or unpunished murder after murder)? Of course not. Obama gets elected and you get the Tea Party movement (sure other factors contributed like the Recession, but you know what I mean). You get armed standoffs like with the supporters of Cliven Bundy in NV (but the white cops didn't send in storm troopers and tanks to break them up). So why is it OK for "marginalized" whites to stand up for their rights (even violently), but not OK when blacks do it - and do it mostly peacefully (and they have way more legit grievances to protest about)?

I guess even the ability to assemble and protest in America is not equally guaranteed and free of bias.

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Maybe you heard that FNC wants BLM classified as a hate group (after a couple recent high-profile attacks on cops that may have been linked to anger over Ferguson/Baltimore/etc.). I know FNC doesn't speak for all of White America, and they are intentionally provocative, but their hostile overreaction to BLM kind of validates American bias and why BLM is actually needed. Good job, Fox.

https://www.facebook.com/HuffingtonPost/videos/10153332388156130/

Let's remember that demographically, it's highly likely that more cop killers are white than minority, and not motivated by politics (I couldn't find data on cop killers' races though). And statistically, being a cop in the US is still safer than the average job. Being a cop in the US is still safer than being a young black man in the US. At least a cop can fight back against attackers, wears Kevlar, and is backed by the law.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/10/the-counted-500-people-killed-by-police-2015

More black churches targeted after Charleston

Did you guys hear that 5 black churches had fires since the SC massacre? 3 are confirmed arson. So assuming it's not a one-in-a-billion coincidence, we as a nation clearly haven't put this behind us. Black people didn't do anything provocative to upset anyone since Charleston (no riots, revenge, etc.). There's no "reason" to burn churches except that racists were tired of seeing black faces and hearing about racism stuff on the media all the time. Intimidation, suppression, and fear - that is the terrorist's playbook.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/28/black-churches-fire_n_7681754.html

I read a black commentator write about healing after Charleston (sorry I can't find the link now). It's all well and good that whites and blacks hold hands to cry and sing together after such a tragedy. Then we return to the same society that spawned such a horrific event. America heals and achieves closure after tragedies on the white schedule. When the whites (majority) feel better and want to move on, that is what the nation does.

But what if blacks are still hurting and don't want to pretend that we're done with this? They know that they still have to live with all the same shit when the funerals are over. They know they are more likely to be murdered than whites. They know nothing has really changed after the news vans clear out. So why don't they have the right to say, "No - you don't get to have catharsis and feel normal again, because WE don't. You don't get to act like this tragedy has brought us closer together, when I am still upset with no relief in sight?" I am taking artistic license, but that is what I think he was getting at.

While the victims of SC have been exceedingly Christ-like though this tragedy, I actually wish they weren't. Don't be so nice and let the mainstream society sweep this under the rug. Keep feeling outrage and rub our face in the fact that we have a messed up country and it's unacceptable. Because as good as they are reacting and behaving now, it's not going to stop the next violent bigot (or even cop) from abusing them. Maybe a Malcolm X approach is needed (arm yourselves, or just leave America if they don't feel wanted here).

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This is a good interview regarding the costs/symptoms of America's refusal to confront its racist heritage: http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2015/06/30/bryan-stevenson-racial-tensions

Taking down the Confederate flag

This was a good discussion about Charleston and race: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/finding-roots-dylann-roofs-radical-violence/

I wish the guests would have hit harder. Yes, white (men) feel under attack these days - but they should have said that those feelings are utterly baseless and not grounded in fact. Or if some whites are having a harder go these days, it is not due to gains by minorities (and there certainly isn't a minority conspiracy for "payback" against whites - even if it's quite deserved). If they don't outright dismiss these lies, then people will continue to believe them (like how the GOP injects doubt into the global warming issue). You can't give Holocaust deniers and Holocaust historians equal respect just to maintain a "fair debate". Bill Maher said that denying the existence of racism (and accusing others of race-baiting) is a form of racism in itself, and I think that's correct. Some on the right would rather attribute Roof's actions to "hatred of Christianity" instead of hatred of blacks. Speaking of that - to those who don't think the SC massacre (and our reaction to it) was racial, what if a synagogue or a meeting of (white) Wall St. execs was attacked by a black power extremist? If America's response would have been different (and it definitely would have), then that shows bias.

IMO, the debate about the Dixie flag is a red herring. I understand that its presence evokes powerful emotions on both sides, but it's a distraction from the core issue. Fighting over symbols is often a fruitless distraction. We can't change the past (nor its icons) and it's better if we accept it and move on. I suppose it's understandable for Southern folks to feel pride about their roots and the "War for Southern Independence." But they also have to acknowledge that some aspects of their society/regime were evil - and the consequences on blacks persist today. They can acknowledge and find a better path forward like Germany, or they can stick their heads in the sand like Japan and Turkey. I would also hope that African-Americans can see past the flag and not let it consume disproportionate attention. They have more important battles to fight.

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But unlike Germany the can't kick the flag.  Pride in the south is pride in a flag that was raised because they wanted to keep their slaves.  I get having southern pride but it would be unbelievable to have german pride and use the swastika as your symbol.  And the racist roots of the flag have major events that occurred WAY more recently that WW2 so it just strikes me as incredibly odd that anyone is fighting for this flag.

And i don't think the right answer to white men feeling under attack is to say "your problems aren't real" or anything of that nature.  And ultimately the poor white people of this country are cajoled into feeling this way to keep the powers that be in place.  Gun rights, anti poverty measures, anti voting measures, a lot of that stuff relies on poor white people voting against their interests and to do that they bring up the specter of the great "other" who for pretty much all of America's history has been blacks.  Sometimes we use brown people now-a-days but the tactic is the same.  So we should understand that they feel a certain way and be riled up that it wasn't an accident.

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Re: the flag - I am not well-versed in 1800's US history, but maybe the Union went too easy on the South after the Civil War. I am sure DC just wanted order and unity again, so they permitted the South to cling to their Confederate heroes and imagery. This was before the advent of hate crimes and war crimes, so it's not like any Southern leaders were prosecuted for their atrocities against blacks. And let's remember that most of America was still fairly racist, even if the South was "more racist." So there may not have been much motivation to chastise the South for clinging to racist icons until post-Civil Rights era (plus they were Constitutionally protected).

Let's also remember that many white-power groups display Nazi symbols to this day. It may be outlawed in parts of Europe, but they make slight mods to the swastika and still march in the streets. And lord knows what they say behind closed doors. This is Greece's Golden Dawn (and there are many other examples):

And this is the Klan of course:

As Obama said, fighting racism doesn't end with making the N-word impolite to say in public. You still have to discourage racist thought when no one is looking; it's a matter of values. It might be a moral victory to take down the Dixie flag and Robert E. Lee statues, but we haven't gained much if the proponents of those icons still feel defiant and bigoted in their core.

Re: angry white people - yeah I wasn't suggesting that we should dismiss their problems/hardships, but they need to understand that it is not the fault of minorities. Many bigoted mass shooters like Roof are paranoid narcissists - they think that others are out to get them because they are superior. It's a terrible mindset (incited by some third parties) and should be discouraged/corrected.

If anyone can be justified in feeling under attack and wanting to rise up, it's black/brown people. But for the most part they know they can't, because society may not side with them and law enforcement would not stand for it. Yet we condone anti-gov't (mostly white) militias and questionable Southern pride groups.

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Honestly, I'm amazed at how responsive Southern state leaders have been re: the flag.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/06/24/417162233/alabama-governor-orders-removal-of-confederate-flags-from-capitol

You'd think that times like this would make people dig in and stick to their pride/ideals. But maybe the sheer horror of the act (and a smart political calculus) convinced them that it's just not worth it to keep fighting modernity.

I bet a lot of right wing media is pissed, but some folks have changed their minds:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/22/the-southern-avenger-repents-i-was-wrong-about-the-confederate-flag.html 

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The secret is you can still be a bigot without a flag.  And there will be no problem finding the people to vote for who agree with you.  Lots of opportunity to ask for their views with codewords like voter fraud protection, welfware waste, etc etc.

The Confederate flag is easier to get rid of than guns, they probably think if they concede on that they’ll show they can “change.”

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Thx, guys. Yeah Bill Maher said that guns kill people, but flags don't kill people. Though I think that neglects the fact that symbols can be powerful motivators. A flag can inspire people to hate more, which then leads to the desire to use a gun.

Change is a funny issue - I thought that hardcore conservatives want to show that they are in fact totally resistant to change and proud of it. I bet we will see a lot of that in the GOP primaries - who can be the most proud and inflexible? But then again, this is not 2012 and the GOP is even talking about wealth inequality these days. But I really think they haven't done anything substantial to court minorities. I guess they are clinging to their old (and failed) strategy of mobilizing the base. Good luck with this field of hacks - who of them can energize and inspire John Q. Voter?

If I had to, I probably would pick Graham except for his ultra-aggressive foreign policy approach.  

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I'm glad you guys raised the Nazi comparison. Has that been discussed in the media? Both flags - among others - are symbols of evil and a mindset that their are superior and inferior races.  Both should be banned from state grounds and memorials. In a free society, we can't ban these symbols outright but we can - and should - call people and institutions out when they use them under the guise of praising people with strong moral convictions and enlightened values of a bygone era. Somehow people are nostalgic about an era where the traditional, native, good, naturally superior, white people owned black people and could savagely beat and kill them without facing any justice because it was their innate right based on their race? 

Yes there is racism is Europe and, sadly, in many other parts of the world. There will always be sympathizers and groups who would like to go back to the "good old days"  where they were treated with the "respect" they deserve. 

What angers and frustrates me is that most Americans seem to fail to recognize the similarity between southern sympathizers and other evil groups. Honestly, I don't see the difference between southern and Nazi sympathizers; but I get the impression that the media and the corporate culture doesn't. 

It wasn't until this heinous incident that Walmart and other businesses "realized" that the confederate flag was offensive and a symbol of hatred? It wasn't until last week that the Governor of South Carolina and other governors and state politicians realized that the flag and other confederate memorials were an inspiration to racists and extremely hurtful and offensive to African Americans? 

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To take a cynical view, I think Walmart and those others stores decided that the scales finally tipped in favor of PR controversy avoidance/respect for their minority customers vs. sales/pleasing their Dixie customers (like how car companies decide to issue a recall only when the cost of suits/damages > cost of recall). I think some companies decided to stop carrying guns & ammo after mass shooting events.

I suppose it's natural that people don't want to feel like they come from a bad/evil heritage. We are proud creatures. The Germans have been exceedingly contrite after WWII, giving huge reparations to Israel (quietly), enacting anti-hate laws, and setting up a lot of domestic education/memorials. But not so for the US. Didn't Obama get flak from the right for "apologizing for America" too much? Maybe Romney said that. Well, the truth is that we have plenty to apologize and repay for (if we actually care about the values we profess), but we haven't because America is exceptional and awesome. Except for:

• No reparations for slavery, only a tacit declaration that the system was "wrong" (and then there were Tuskegee, Jim Crow, lynchings, war on drugs, etc.)
• Very few reparations and acknowledgement for Native Americans - who suffered war crimes/genocide and we were no better than Cortez/Columbus really (and we can them savages?)
• Promising citizenship and pay for Filipinos who fought for our side vs. Japan in WWII, then totally reneging (and doing the same damn thing with many Iraqis and Afghans who helped us)
• And then there were all the times that we unlawfully and immorally wrecked another people's land
• The list goes on and on...

Empires are not built with kindness and honorable behavior. I think progressive Americans can be open and honest about our "evil" past, for lack of a better word. Growing up in the US edu system, and despite being a crazy leftist, it even gives me pause to call the US evil. But the facts don't change. So I think some in the South haven't reached that point of clarity and reason yet, and likely never will, even if the flag is banned (which we can't do).

I wonder if our leaders/media even ask the South - how do you feel about slavery and the Confederacy? They refused to attribute race/guns to the SC shooting, and I think they would hesitate to speak negatively about Dixie. They prefer to remember those times as if it was "Gone with the Wind," or R.E. Lee charging gallantly into battle against the evil Union oppressors. So actually the guys trying to free your slaves were the evil ones.

Unless we go on an education blitz, this false narrative will persist. We commemorate the ends of the World Wars, why not remember the end of the Civil War (costliest US war in terms of lives and domestic damage) and have a national dialogue about the causes and teachings? We have the Holocaust Museum in DC, why don't we have the US racism and war crimes museums too? I know there are some black history museums here and there, but maybe the public doesn't think it applies to everyone - it's for the blacks to learn about their heritage, right? Well it's a shared heritage, and if we don't confront it, the bad/evil ideas will linger. Like M said, the flag is only part of the problem - we really need to get Americans to stop maintaining the beliefs that the flag represents.

GOP candidate cowardice after the SC shooting

This was pretty nauseating but expected from the pathetic field of 2016 GOP candidates: http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/06/19/415747034/predictably-democrats-republicans-dont-agree-on-charleston-causes-solutions?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20150619

In contrast to the president, not a single one of them called the SC shooting terrorism, nor mentioned race or guns, even though the alleged shooter himself cited hatred of blacks as a motive, and Roof's friend said that he was so concerned after hearing a racist rant that he hid his Glock for a while. And let's remember, the Columbine shooters were supposedly into Nazism, and used the n-word before killing one black student.

They collectively said, "let's not rush to blame and policy changes; gov't is not the solution." That's peculiar for several reasons:

• After OKC, USS Cole, and 9/11, the GOP sure was rushing to blame some Muslims (without any evidence) and use the strong arm of gov't to fight terrorism overseas.
• When it's whites killing blacks (esp. if the shooter is a cop), "let's wait till we get all the facts." When it's blacks behaving badly - or the media portraying as such (looting/riots after Katrina or Ferguson), then "look at how American values are crumbling, and it's the liberals' fault".

Just putting it out there: these mass shooters seem to have a similar profile - weird-looking skinny white male loners. If we are racially profiling people from the Mideast-South Asia as potential terrorists, and giving them more airport security attention, then why aren't we profiling weird white boys and making it harder for them to possess a gun? The data show that cops are obviously profiling blacks for drugs and other crimes, so why is that OK for minorities but not for whites?


And just to comment on the terrorism issue: the FBI lists heavily-armed right-wing anti-gov't groups as the #2 US terror threat behind Islamists. I think it's a safe bet that many of these groups may not hold minorities in great esteem either.

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http://www.vox.com/2015/6/19/8811535/charleston-shooting-daily-show

ISIS executes an American journalist on video, and the western world launches a bombing campaign on 2 nations. A slow bleed of domestic gun-toting bigots/psychopaths killing innocent Americans every few months, and our gov't response is nil.

Race and America

http://news.yahoo.com/shooting-downtown-charleston-south-carolina-031543897.html

We don't yet know the motives of the shooter (only that he is a 21-year-old white male who is still at large in SC). But authorities are labeling this as a hate crime. I know that one incident does not make a trend, but could this be a signal of growing white backlash against "Black Lives Matter" and other efforts to expose racial injustice?

I worry about white people (esp. men) who feel economically marginalized and dignity-attacked by national events since the recession. The worst thing would be a white-power militant backlash like some of the right-wing European parties that rapidly gained prominence during the Euro crisis.

Of course the hardships and insults that some whites feel in America may be real, but the culprits are obviously not minorities. But the true culprits are really good at concealment/propaganda and letting media deflect attention away from them. All you hear from FNC is that Christianity, white people (men), "US values", guns/cops, and conservatism are under attack. But the data show that evangelical Christianity is as strong as ever (despite declines in all other forms of Christianity), whites still have huge advantages in terms of incarceration rates, income, life expectancy, and most other socioeconomic metrics. Also, 3X more hate crimes are perpetrated against blacks than whites, even though blacks are only 12% of the US.

Obviously many whites are having more struggles in America. If they are ignorant, it's fairly easy to persuade them to blame immigrants, gays, liberals, etc. Much of Rush, Fox, etc.'s airtime is devoted to this. So are they actually the race-baiters who motivate some angry whites to attack minorities? Blood could be on their hands (like the Gabby Giffords shooting, etc.).

http://mediamatters.org/video/2014/12/01/fox-guest-we-will-see-more-white-americans-unde/201727
http://www.newshounds.us/to_bill_o_reilly_white_christians_are_under_attack_but_not_african_americans_actually_killed_by_the_police_041615
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/opinion/charles-blow-woe-of-white-men-again.html

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Also, did you hear about this Supreme Court ruling (TX did not violate the 1st Amend. by prohibiting a Southern group from making a custom license plate with the Dixie flag) where Thomas was the difference maker, siding with the liberals for the first time? If I can assume that his decision was motivated by his race and his deeper understanding of US racial history, is this an indictment that the Court is biased by personal background? I know we are all biased by our backgrounds, but the Court is supposed to be fair and just and blind, right?

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/confederate-flag-plates-lack-support-supreme-court

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This was a good discussion about Charleston and race: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/finding-roots-dylann-roofs-radical-violence/

I wish the guests would have hit harder. Yes, white (men) feel under attack these days - but they should have said that those feelings are utterly baseless and not grounded in fact. Or if some whites are having a harder go these days, it is not due to gains by minorities (and there certainly isn't a minority conspiracy for "payback" against whites - even if it's quite deserved). If they don't outright dismiss these lies, then people will continue to believe them (like how the GOP injects doubt into the global warming issue). You can't give Holocaust deniers and Holocaust historians equal respect just to maintain a "fair debate". Bill Maher said that denying the existence of racism (and accusing others of race-baiting) is a form of racism in itself, and I think that's correct. Some on the right would rather attribute Roof's actions to "hatred of Christianity" instead of hatred of blacks. Speaking of that - to those who don't think the SC massacre (and our reaction to it) was racial, what if a synagogue or a meeting of (white) Wall St. execs was attacked by a black power extremist? If America's response would have been different (and it definitely would have), then that shows bias.

IMO, the debate about the Dixie flag is a red herring. I understand that its presence evokes powerful emotions on both sides, but it's a distraction from the core issue. Fighting over symbols is often a fruitless distraction. We can't change the past (nor its icons) and it's better if we accept it and move on. I suppose it's understandable for Southern folks to feel pride about their roots and the "War for Southern Independence." But they also have to acknowledge that some aspects of their society/regime were evil - and the consequences on blacks persist today. They can acknowledge and find a better path forward like Germany, or they can stick their heads in the sand like Japan and Turkey. I would also hope that African-Americans can see past the flag and not let it consume disproportionate attention. They have more important battles to fight.