Shock waves sweep U.S. after white supremacist murders nine Black people

From A World to Win News Service;

 Many people abroad, and some in the United States., believe that with the presidency of the African-American Barack Obama, the U.S. has become a "post racial" society. In fact, the country is becoming increasingly – and violently – polarized for and against the oppression of Black people. 

Despite the massive protests against police killings of Black people that began breaking out after the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida by a white vigilante, and then especially last year after the shooting of the unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and choking to death Eric Garner in New York, U.S. police have been continuing to kill Black people and other minorities at a terrifying rate. To give a statistic that reveals something about the difference between the U.S. and other imperialist countries, despite the prevalence of racism in all of them, U.S. police have shot dead almost 400 people so far this year, not counting those who were choked to death, killed by electrical shocks (Tazers) or otherwise murdered in custody. Half were minorities, and Black people were far more likely to be killed while unarmed and allegedly committing a minor offence (like failing to obey police orders) or none at all. 

This has everything to do with the legacy of slavery and other forms of the oppression of Black people that have continued since the end of the civil war, when the southern states (the Confederacy) fought to preserve the "right" to enslave African-Americans. There is tremendous controversy over whether to remove the Confederate flag that now flies in official events and locations, including the capital of South Carolina, a state where slaves once vastly outnumbered white people, and where the civil war began. 

When 21-year old Dylann Storm Roof walked into a church in Charleston, South Carolina whose history is deeply rooted in resistance to slavery and Black oppression, he wore a t-shirt bearing the flags of the white minority regimes that once ruled Zimbabwe and South Africa. His Web site also featured the Confederate flag. The state's governor at first denied that the massacre of nine people in this church had anything to do with racism. Later, she claimed that state law will not allow her to lower that flag. While other politicians called for its removal, as if the official American flag itself were not itself a symbol of oppression in the country and the world, the fact that many prominent political figures have defended the Confederate flag or refused to condemn it shows the depths at which fissures are speeding through U.S. society. Roof explained his act by saying that he wanted to provoke a new civil war. 

In its coverage of the massacre and the aftermath, Revolution, newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA , reported the following observations by a team of revolutionaries, including members of the Revolution Club in Atlanta, Georgia, at a 21 June memorial service held at that church, located in what has become a white area after Blacks were pushed out. Hundreds of people crammed inside and gathered on the street in front, many from nearby churches.

"One older white woman from a different church congregation brought her Confederate flag from her house. This flag had been passed down through generations in her family and had been on the wall of her kitchen. She brought it to the church and said she didn't want it on her wall any more. A group of white children with scissors ceremonially cut it up.

"We weren’t the only ones challenging the terms of 'healing' – before the disease is cured. One sister came with her sign 'Enough is Enough' on one side and on the other 'White Jesus isn't Coming Back.' She, too, was the focus of controversy. I talked to her about why she was making this statement here. She said, 'They are continuing to mask the underlying hate.' 

"She said, "Black people make 13 percent of this country, but we are the highest rate of incarceration and death. We are killing each other – because what do we do with the hate? This Kumbahyah [an African-American folk song often taken to mean that God will everyone together – which is Obama's stance] ain't working for everyone. That white boy was angry, what do we do? I'm not saying go out here and kill anyone, I don’t condone hate to that measure, but we have to be able to express [our] anger...
'[I'm focused on] those who are struggling in the economy, who have no hope, this next generation, they are the ones who can make change... Everyone coming to me with anger is 23, 24 and younger. Out here, they are trying to cover the anger. This country has been built on Black backs. I've been told they have pushed Black people out of this community. We are angry at this gunman, but he ain't by himself. It would be stupid to think this is just one man with a gun!'" 

Pix of Dylann Storm Roof, www.pbs.org.