On June 17, 2015, nine people were shot and killed in the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. The suspect has been caught, placed into custody, and charged with nine counts of murder and one count of possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime. Furthermore, law enforcement has determined that this attack had been planned for roughly six months and the church was specifically targeted due to its significance in African-American history.

The victims themselves consisted of six women and three men, one of which was Clementa C. Pinckney, who was both the church pastor and a South Carolina senator. The others include Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, and Myra Thompson. However, there are more than nine victims that resulted from last week's shooting: all the families involved have lost a beloved family member, the Charleston community has lost their peace of mind, and America as a whole has lost nine valued citizens. After all this loss, I can only hope that we will gain the unity and strength needed to overcome the hatred that still exists in this nation.

There is no doubt that this mass shooting was the result of racial discrimination, as the shooter was engrossed in the notion of white supremacy; but many continue to believe that this atrocity was the result of a case of mental illness.

White men make up approximately 36 percent of the population, but commit 75 percent of mass shootings. What would be called terrorism by any other skin tone is suddenly some mysterious unnamed disease. We as a society are perfectly happy to further stigmatize mentally ill people, who are far more likely to be victims of violence than commit violence, in the service of protecting white supremacy and male entitlement (The "Mental Illness" We Refuse to Name: White Male Entitlement).

Racial prejudice has been incessantly apparent in the United States, but what many people don't understand is that this bigotry is ingrained in our culture despite the Supreme Court ruling that ended racial segregation in 1964. It is prominent in social interactions, in schools and the workforce, and even in the media; however, after the events in Ferguson, Baltimore, McKinney, and now, Charleston, people are still denying the existence of anti-black racism in America.

To this day, the Confederate flag continues to fly next to a Civil War monument on the grounds of the South Carolina capitol. While many believe this battle flag is symbolic of the historic southern culture, factual evidence reveals that the Confederate flag wasn't even appropriated by the Confederate Congress. In fact, it "never flew over any state capitols during the Confederacy, ...[and it] probably would have been relegated to Civil War museums if it had not been resurrected by the resurgent KKK..."¹ Thus, until we can rid our country of the inherent racism that has plagued our nation, we cannot expect change or an end to such bigotry that enables people to act so crude without consequence.

References

1. Martinez, James Michael; Richardson, William Donald; McNinch-Su, Ron (2000).Confederate Symbols in the Contemporary South. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. pp. 284–285. Retrieved 20 June 2015.