Injustice

7-1-15

I awoke this morning and went about my daily routine as I would any day. Shower, shave, make a cup of coffee, and sit down to the news. I am always troubled by what I read because that is the nature of the world we live in, but on this particular morning I am even more disturbed than on others. This is after reading an article about the string of fires at predominately black churches across the south. This information is not what really troubles me because, as we have seen in recent weeks in the wake of the Charlestown shootings, racism is still alive and well today. So stories of race motivated crimes, sadly, do not surprise me, even though I desperately wish they did. But what does make me irritate, to the point of viable shaking, is how we are responding to these acts of violence. While reading an article about yet another black church catching fire during the night I am appalled to read the language in which the story is written. The author, like many others reporting on these events, and the authorities in charge, are taking any chance they can to deflect the blame away from hate. They are adamant about pointing out the chance that it could just be coincidence and that all the events could just be accidents that just happened to follow directly in the wake of one of the most heinous hate crimes that this country has witnessed. Now I am not an investigator and don't know exactly what is going on, and I feel it is probably an important part of the investigators job to try and calm the public before any questions are answered. That being said, it infuriates me the different ways we report on different race related crimes. Whenever it is a white person doing the damage we claim that they are "mentally ill". We say that it was just the actions of a person that didn't have the mental fortitude to understand the consequences. When we speak of minorities committing crimes we use words such as thug, terrorist, and gang member. This was no different in the reporting of the Charlestown shootings as we have already labeled the suspect as a "troubled individual" with "severe mental complications". This does not do justice to the actions that were committed. This event was a terrorist attack on our soil by a member of a gang that perpetuates hate. This leads me to the caution that we are taking in calling these "coincidental" church fires by their true names, hate crimes. Again, I am not an investigator and don't know everything about the scenes of the crimes, but if you think that this many black churches have been burnt down in wake of the most heinous hate crime of my generation is just an act of God or a "coincidence", then I believe you are either naive or just completely blind to the deep racial bias that exists in this country. Until each and every one of us opens our eyes to the long ignored racial gap that exists in this country we will continue to see events such as this take place and we will continue to cast the blame towards coincidence, metal illnesses, or whatever propagated view that the media chooses to perpetuate. We can not allow the racial divide be cast aside and ignored any longer. It is time to put a bandage on the wound instead of hoping it will heal by itself.