'What remains is a new chapter in an old story of racial difference and human sameness.'

[Surya Gayatri]

“Is something missing from your life?” Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church asked on its Web site, inviting one and all to its weekly Bible study. “Are you doing all you can to have a closer relationship with God? .?.?. Join us on Wednesdays at 6:00 p.m. in the lower level. .?.?.”

Thirteen people accepted the invitation to the whitewashed landmark in historic Charleston on Wednesday evening. Nine of them are dead. One, the lone white man in a room full of descendants of slaves, killed them. He left one adult to tell the story. Two others — a woman and her granddaughter — escaped the murderer’s savage attentions.

‘I forgive you’

What remains is a new chapter in an old story of racial difference and human sameness.

It is a story of symbols: On the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Texas could reject a license plate featuring the Confederate flag, that flag flew atop its pole in South Carolina’s capital. Nearby, the American flag and the state banner were lowered to half-staff to honor the shooting victims. But South Carolina law requires that the battle flag of the Confederacy always flies high.

And it is a story of labels: The killer saw not people but a dehumanized race. On the day of the shooting, it was reported that the U.S. Census Bureau would experiment with eliminating questions about “race,” instead asking Americans to describe their background however they wished.

Finally, it is a story of faith in humanity. At a bond hearing in a Charleston courtroom Friday afternoon, relatives of those killed at Emanuel looked into a video screen at an image of Roof broadcast from the detention center.

There was no yelling. There were no accusations. Instead, people who had lost the loves of their lives blessed the accused murderer.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/roof-friend-i-dont-think-he-hated-blacks-i-think-he-hated-humans/2015/06/19/75d697f4-15da-11e5-9518-f9e0a8959f32_story.html?hpid=z1

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Good read for a lot of the back story.