What We've Failed To Learn About Mass Shootings Fueled By Hate

One year after the Charleston shooting, America still hasn't faced its demons.
Elliot Rodger, Dylann Roof, Omar Mateen. Three mass shooters, fueled by hate.
Elliot Rodger, Dylann Roof, Omar Mateen. Three mass shooters, fueled by hate.
Getty/Reuters

June 17 marks the one-year anniversary of one of the worst mass shootings in America -- the Charleston church massacre. On that day, 21-year-old Dylann Roof sat with a bible study group at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. After a full hour of sitting with the group as they worshipped, he proceeded to pull out a gun and open fire on them, killing nine innocent people -- all of them African American.

Later, we would find out in a manifesto published on Roof's website that the intention behind his heinous act was fueled by a deep hatred for black people. He expressed disgust at the thought of black men and white women together, claiming, "you [black men] rape our women." His desire was to spark a race war.

A year after the massacre, a year after heated debates on gun control and mental health and most of all, race, we've now been plunged into yet another national conversation that rests at the intersection of horrific violence and hatred: the shooting in Orlando.

But what have we actually learned?

That's always the question when it comes to the cancer of gun violence and mass shootings that plague this country (and this world). What have we learned? How do we progress? How do we ensure that something like this never happens again? The answer, surely, lies in our policies surrounding guns, policies that currently in many states make it terrifyingly easy for citizens to legally purchase assault rifles. But the answer also lies in something we're seemingly unwilling to do in the United States: acknowledge, recognize and work through our national demons.

The Charleston massacre was significant for a lot of reasons. It was just days before Juneteenth (the annual celebration of the end of slavery in the Americas), at a church that played an integral role in the Civil Rights movement. It also happened during what seemed like a racial boiling point in America.

In April, Walter Scott, unarmed, was shot and killed from behind in South Carolina while fleeing from a police officer -- the circumstances of his death only came to light when a video taken by a bystander eventually surfaced. In May, the state of emergency had been lifted in Baltimore, where protests surrounding the death of Freddie Gray had filled the streets. Police brutality and the #BlackLivesMatter movement were both at the forefront of the country's collective mind.

With all this tension around race in the atmosphere, what happened in Charleston was as much about the senseless destruction caused by gun violence as it was about the senseless destruction caused by racism. Roof was a radical manifestation of our race problem, a potent reminder that white supremacy and white rage are not anomalies -- they're worked into the very fabric of this country. The more we ignore them, the more we allow them to grow, just beneath the surface.

The homophobia of Omar Mateen, the shooter behind the terrorism at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, is also just beneath the surface in this country. There's been a lot of debate about whether Mateen's attack was fueled by "radical Islam" or homophobia, but whatever his alliances, it is clear Mateen sought out LGBT victims to kill in an LGBT space.

And his disgust also festers in this country, a country where one week a person can say that trans people should "go pee in the bushes" instead of public restrooms, and weeks later share their condolences to the LGBT people affected by the shooting. Therein lies the blinding hypocrisy of our horror at these violent incidents.

And let us not forget when 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people in Isla Vista, California, back in May 2014. He, too, exposed a sense of entitlement and hatred for women that's very much a part of our society. The display of his hatred may have been extreme, but the hatred itself was not exclusive to him. He chose a mass shooting to express his anger at rejection, at women not freely allowing him access to their bodies. It's a type of anger that's expressed through physical and sexual violence against women every day.

And that's the thing. These shootings are reminders of the reality of these isms (homophobia, racism, sexism) in our everyday lives. The Charleston shooting laid bare a reality of this country in a brutal, raw way. But the deaths of Freddie Gray, Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, the deaths of the nine innocent people at Mother Emmanuel Church, the violent and senseless deaths of countless black people across this country and across the centuries all lie on a continuum. They are not separate. They are echoes of each other.

Charleston, Isla Vista, Orlando. As tempting as it is to dismiss these mass shooters as maniacs (and of course, in a sense, they are), we have to recognize that they hold ideals that many Americans, behind closed doors, share. Of course, not every mass shooting in America has been fueled by an ism. But what we can learn from the common thread that link these specific incidents is that violence manifests itself in many ways. It can be explicit or it can be subtle, but all violence makes an impact, and leaves a scar.

One year after Charleston and days after Orlando, here's what we need to learn: these mass shootings are the extreme demonstrations of hate, yes. But every time someone turns away in disgust at a gay couple kissing, misgenders a trans person, harasses a woman on the street, or questions the concept of "black lives matter," it's a subtle violence, a contribution to the kind of hate that explodes across the 24-hour news cycle in the form of another mass shooting. It's time we accept that, so we can truly move forward.

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