“Racism, we are not cured of it, … And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say ni**er in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don’t, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior.” President Barack Obama
The church shooting in South Carolina brings back memories of some of the worst racially motivated crimes in American history. It forces us to see these are not transracial times. There is no ability to become a society of postracialism, when acts like this remind us of what racism’s dark past is in America. This is the United States and our culture has a legacy rooted on black oppression, with branches that reach into homes from Ferguson, Missouri, to Charleston, South Carolina. The looming consequence for leaving our history unresolved is the ignored part of the great American story.
From four little girls killed by a bombing at a Birmingham church in 1963, to now seeing in 2015 nine devout Christian South Carolinians shot down during bible study at one of the oldest black churches in the country. To commit a heinous act of this sort, in this place should force all of us to look in the mirror and get honest about how we got here. Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church stands a mere mile away from one of America’s original slave markets “the Old Slave Mart”, it is a marker of faith and history. It is a place of sanctuary, and forgiveness. That is why this moment is so hard to swallow, or reconcile. It reminds us that our history is recent, and as such has a deep shadow that lays itself at the feet of so many of our citizens lives.
President Obama spoke on the tragedy and stated,
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.
Black lives matter from the streets of Baltimore, to the traffic courts of Ferguson and also in the churches of Charleston, South Carolina. This is the case, even if young Dylann Storm Roof didn’t believe so. Yet to not recognize this as more than the issue of a sole gunman, is to deny that there is a culture that needs to change in so many parts of our country. South Carolina is a place where the Confederate flag still flys at the state capital, and plantation tours take place daily, it is a place that tells us our past is today. As I said in the piece “The Failure of the Race to Erase Racism”,
“It is race that ensnared generations of blacks in a spiral of failure upon which America built so much of its financial success, and it is the consequence of racism that now is the corroded artery choking American cities from Ferguson to Baltimore and beyond. It is here that we see the reason for Affirmative Action, Fair Housing Laws and Voting Rights.”
We must answer this kind of hate, with love and knowledge. It is our task to take on the challenge of change with a commitment to a deeper understanding of our past. Just this week it was announced we will be able to pay homage to our ancestors as slavery records become searchable online next year. These databases that weren’t available prior, along with lineage tools like Ancestry.com and DNA test such as 23andme provide us access to knowing more about our past.
As we mourn South Carolina’s tragedy, we must move forward by demanding a reckoning with our history’s vestiges. A confronting of our legacy, so we all step into tomorrow not blinded by postracialism, but guided by awareness and acceptance of race’s role in our great country’s creation.
Antonio Moore is a Los Angeles based entertainment attorney with several celebrity clients. He is also producer of the documentary on the Iran Contra & Crack Cocaine Epidemic “Freeway: Crack in the System presented by Al Jazeera.” Besides EURweb, Mr. Moore has also contributed pieces to theGrio, Huffington Post and AllHipHop on the topics of race, mass incarceration and economics.
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