A FRIEND IN NEED

By Calvin Hill

Why did no one tell him?  Why didn’t any of his “friends” tell him?  Someone should have told 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof how fortunate he was to be white in the United States, in general, and in South Carolina in particular.  Why did he not know that the rebel symbol that adorns the front plate of his automobile also flies high on an official South Carolina flagpole denoting his state’s commitment to white superiority?

Not one person bothered to tell Dylann how blessed he was to be able to walk the streets of South Carolina after being arrested for drug possession.  And according to a report by Radar Online, he also has a case pending for possession of cocaine, LSD and methamphetamine.  How could he not know that being white in South Carolina allowed him to be free to walk around, with a gun, while facing so much legal jeopardy!  The black people he accuses of “taking over the world” would not fare as well.

Dylann should have known that a black man, in South Carolina, took five bullets in the back from a law enforcement officer simply because he was afraid of the consequences of being late with his child support payments.  Dylann Roof was totally unaware that in the year of his birth, law enforcement officers rained havoc down upon black men in South Carolina when Susan Smith, a white mother, lied to police that her two white children were kidnapped by a black carjacker – or that a similar insult to black manhood occurred in the Roxbury section of Boston, Massachusetts when a white man murdered his white wife and told police that a black man shot him and killed her.  Hardly the fortunes of blacks “taking over the world.”

No one bothered to warn Roof’s black neighbors that he was spewing pro-segregationist and anti-black rhetoric, or that his rhetoric was increasingly inching toward violence.  And when his childhood friend, Joseph Meek, returned Roof’s .45 caliber handgun to the owner that Meek sensed had been racially brainwashed to the point of violent confrontation, he ignited the fuse that blew up nine innocent lives, their families, their church community, and riled the conscience of a nation.  A nation that, thankfully, is not immune to the horror of publicity seeking mass murderers.

Unfortunately, the nation’s Congress appears to have been vaccinated against feeling the pain of such horrific violence.  The US Congress can never seem to relegate reasonable and sensible avenues to secure the right of the people to keep and bear arms with the right of the people to be secure in their person in the pursuit of life and liberty.  One of Roof’s friends should have told him that the US Congress is allowing  blacks to be so marginalized at the voting booth that he need not worry about them ever “taking over.”

Clearly, America needs a better Congress.  But Dylann Roof needed better friends.