Do you want to understand why Charleston, South Carolina, shooter Dylann Roof did what he did? Let’s go straight to his own personal manifesto. The answer is there, plain as day. And it’s not exactly what you’re thinking.
The following is from Dylann Roof’s racist manifesto (linked to reason.com 6/20/15, “Charleston Shooter Dylann Roof’s Racist Manifesto,” by Jesse Walker; the article describes verification of the manifesto’s source):
Black people view everything through a racial lense. Thats what racial awareness is, its viewing everything that happens through a racial lense. They are always thinking about the fact that they are black. This is part of the reason they get offended so easily, and think that some thing are intended to be racist towards them, even when a White person wouldnt be thinking about race. The other reason is the Jewish agitation of the black race.
Black people are racially aware almost from birth, but White people on average dont think about race in their daily lives. And this is our problem. We need to and have to.
Roof, like everyone, has been raised to define racism as hatred of black people — or hatred of a minority. But that’s not what racism is. Racism is — as he himself mentioned in his crude manifesto — seeing everything through a racial lens.
He was critical of black people — as he sees them — for viewing everything through a racial lens. His solution? For white people to start doing the same. His violent outburst was evidently a way to bring things back into “balance,” on the premises of collective group identity. If the war is blacks versus whites, then (he felt) it was time for whites to have a victory.
In other words, Roof’s solution was to fight group identity with group identity. Wrong — deadly wrong, in Dylann Roof’s case.
The answer isn’t for anyone (of any race or background) to view themselves in terms of group identity. The only antidote to Dylann Roof’s racism, or any racism, is individualism.
If Roof had been an individualist, he would not have focused on “all” black people, or “all” white people, as either problems or solutions. He would have recognized the error in viewing all blacks as victims and all whites as victimizers, the dominant attitude and approach of today’s civil rights advocates. At the same time, he would have recognized the equal error in turning this around, to view all white people as victims of all black people.
The error that made Roof’s racism possible was his collectivism, the very focus on group identity he decries in blacks but somehow justifies for whites.
Most people who make this error don’t turn to violence. However, this is part of the thinking that made his brutality possible. It’s also the kind of error that makes less bloody injustices possible, as well.
The moment you stop thinking of yourself or others in terms of group or other racial identity is the moment you stop racism in its tracks.
It’s doubtful that Roof was learning any of this in school, or what passes for the wider intellectual culture.
As a reader of mine eloquently put it, “Is it any wonder that Roof absorbed the identity politics that schools and the media have been pounding into his head since he was born? Do you think he ever heard the term ‘color-blind’ presented as a value instead of as a micro-aggression?”
We know what Roof thinks of individualism. I wonder what his teachers and other authority figures in life think of it. If they’re like the majority, they oppose it. If they’re conservative, they oppose individualism as selfish, and therefore wrong, because it goes against the more important ideals of God, family and community. If they’re more progressive or secular, they oppose individualism as selfish, because it goes against your duty to sacrifice for the sake of society, and for the sake of a minority group if you happen to be a member of a majority group.
Dylann Roof picked his side in the two alternatives (“conservative” or “liberal”) offered in place of individualism. But only individualism could have saved him, not to mention his slaughtered victims.
One can never hope to understand the kind of hatred that would lead Roof to murder, in cold blood, innocent people on their private property, as he did. But what we do know is that his hatred stemmed from an irrational fixation on the group.
Against the preachy, dogmatic political correctness of today’s racial identity group politics, Roof saw no other alternative, none except for white supremacist racism. His attitude replaced one form of “racial lens viewing” with another.
Racism is not hatred of any particular racial group. It’s the worship of race over and above character. Roof’s Klan and Nazi brethren are certainly racists. However, those who turn blacks, Hispanics or others into race-centered victim classes are making the very same kind of error.
So long as we keep trying to teach children that race is the most important thing about a person, we’re subjecting ourselves to the kind of collectivist/group identity counter-reaction that was Dylann Roof.
Go ahead and outlaw guns, go ahead with your mandatory psychiatric evaluations, sensitivity seminars and all the rest. Those things will not do a thing to alleviate or reduce racism. They won’t do a thing to prevent the manifestation of another Dylann Roof.
Only individualism will.
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