Senseless act of terror

In South Carolina, 21 year old young white man walks into a Church under the pretext of participating in the Bible study, inquires about the Pastor of the Church and seats right next to him during the study, an hour later he gets up to shoot many black people sitting around him shouting, “I have to do this. You are raping our woman and taking over our country”. He reloaded his gun several times to finish his mission. Then, he gets into his getaway car and drives down to North Carolina. The pastor of this Church is a person of exemplary character and is a senator of South Carolina senate when he died. At the age of 23, he was elected as a representative of the South Carolina House of Representatives.

Within a few hours, this young man was caught by the police and placed in the jail. Not only the state but the entire nation is mourning now because of the senseless behavior of this young man. It looks like he had a Rhodesian Flag as well as Apartheid South African Flag in his jacket. Even though many claims he was mentally unstable, he systematically became a white supremacist with so much hate for black people. The Church he chose for his mission was historical for promoting civil rights for more than 200 years. The very same church was burnt down earlier and rebuilt. The civil right moments promoted by this Church was curtailed by several legislations in the past until the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964.

When this young man confessed to his crime, he told the cops that he almost changed his mind before executing his mission because everyone around him were very nice during the Bible study. Confirming to this fact, most family members of the victims as well as survivors of this attack pardoned this young man in an open court. I am pretty sure this criminal will be punished soon by the court of competent jurisdiction. But the purpose of this post is not to analyze this one act of terror but sequence of events that results in several innocent people losing their lives for such senseless terrorism. Terrorism emanating from overseas is passionately discussed by every politician but when it comes to attack on innocent civilians because of hate of a particular religion or race, the politicians takes upon themselves to only express their condolences and nothing more.

Is it adequate if a nation is #1 in economic and military power? What determines a country as an advanced nation? Will it be adequate if there are enough laws made to punish the perpetrators? The incidence of this nature are too frequent and shakes the conscience of minority population who takes significant part in nation building and plays a dominant role in every field that we could name. More than the act of terror committed by these criminals, the act of remaining silent and being insensitive to such act of terror causes more aggravation. It is time to have legislation in the country to make the sellers of firearm more accountable and license to hold firearms be more restricted. Such hate crimes should be classified as act of terrorism as opposed to regular crime.

Segregation remains informal in many ways. The act of locking up the car while a black man or woman walks by near the car, not maintaining eye contact while talking to people of color, changing seats in a public place when people of color are seated next, etc. still remain in some part of the country. Even though interracial marriages have happened in the past, there are pockets of resistance for people of color in many places. It is very common to see the cops being more aggressive against people of color even though I have so much respect for the risks they take as part of their job.

In my view, legislation is not going to help unless there is a paradigm shift in the attitude of people of this nation. It is a disgrace to show strength while such terrorism emanates from overseas and remain a silent spectator of such cowardly acts inside the country. Doesn’t act of terror against people of color qualify as terrorist act? It is time for people of all religions and races and politicians of both parties to get together to campaign for the unity of people as one nation. The places of work, places of worship, schools, colleges, local and government offices, offices of private organization, etc. should have mandatory training sessions teaching tolerance of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, ancestry, disability, gender identity, gender expression, marital status, parental status, economic status, etc. People of this nation takes a lot of pride about mix of ethnicity but true pride can be felt only when such cowardly hate crimes are eradicated.

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Senseless act of terror