It's nearly impossible to imagine the daily fear and caution, and rage, that African American citizens still--unbelievably, still--endure in this country.
As for "the age of Obama," this is certainly true:
But the words attributed to the shooter are both a throwback and thoroughly contemporary: one recognizes the rhetoric of extreme reaction and racism heard so often in the era of Barack Obama. His language echoed the barely veiled epithets hurled at Obama in the 2008 and 2012 campaigns (“We want our country back!”) and the raw sewage that spewed onto Obama’s Twitter feed (@POTUS) the moment he cheerfully signed on last month. “We still hang for treason don’t we?” one @jeffgully49, who also posted an image of the President in a noose, wrote.
The sadness and anger the president felt was fully evident in his words yesterday, and especially in what he
couldn't say. While those on the right will spew their racist invectives, many of us on the left will criticize him for being not "angry" enough. It is a testament to this president's, well, "presidentiality," that he recognizes he cannot compromise the status of the legal investigation and prosecution by openly and fully discussing the racial content of this criminal act. His words yesterday, though, did subtly and poetically allude to the long history of racism in this country, to which this attack was linked:
Mother Emanuel is, in fact, more than a church. This is a place of worship that was founded by African Americans seeking liberty. This is a church that was burned to the ground because its worshipers worked to end slavery.
When there were laws banning all-black church gatherings, they conducted church services in secret. When there was a nonviolent movement to bring our country in closer line with our highest ideals, some of our brightest leaders spoke and led marches from this church's steps.
This is a sacred place in the history of Charleston and in the history of America.
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