I don’t post as often as I should, but right now I’m curious about something.
Since when does a white supremacist gunman, lover of racist states like Rhodesia, apartheid South Africa, and the Confederate States of America have black friends?
According to a number of reports, many of the man’s Facebook friends were black. And in various news reports, some of his black friends are actually quoted:
Last Wednesday — exactly one week before the Charleston church massacre — Roof told his friends and neighbors at the park that “he was looking to kill a bunch of people on Wednesday” at the College of Charleston, Scriven said.
The friends assumed Roof, known for his dry sense of humor, was joking.
“He’s weird. You don’t know when to take him seriously and when not to,” said Scriven, who is black.
The College of Charleston said Roof had no connection to the public university.
Another black friend (assuming this sicko had friends) confirms the same thing:
“I never thought he’d do something like this,” said high school friend Antonio Metze, 19, who is black. “He had black friends.”
Roof used to skateboard while growing up in the Lexington area and had long hair back then. He attended high school in Lexington and in nearby Columbia from 2008 to 2010, school officials said. It was not immediately clear whether he graduated.
“He was pretty smart,” Metze said.
Smart or not, a week after chatting with his friends about killing college people, the guy commits mass murder in a black church.
It’s easy to conclude the man is mentally ill, and I would like to think that he is.
Because if he is not mentally ill, then this does not pass my smell test.
Comments
9 responses to “Huh?”
I hope people won’t assume that this happened because it was in South Carolina. South Carolina was the heart of the Confederacy. It is where secession began. It is where the Civil War began. I come from the South but I live in California, and people like Roof can be found here too. Violent white supremacists are spread out all over the U.S They are not just in the South.
Maybe their fox news toms in training and they need practice being differential to racist nazi’s!
[…] of things that don’t pass my smell test, here’s another piece of […]
This is not that hard. He had black friends in high school. He dropped out and somewhere along the line became a racist.
It’s easy to conclude the man is mentally ill, and I would like to think that he is.
Of course you would. You can’t bring yourself to even believe that there might be right-wing racist terrorists who are targeting blacks (and Democrats, see Knoxville 2008 . . .and Sikhs, see Wisconsin 2010)
For some reason, right-wingers are very desperate to throw all these weird characterizations at him (mentally ill, deranged, attacking Christians) while avoiding calling him a racist, which he obviously was.
Just to add to the confusion: there’s also a Dylan-with-one-n Roof who lives in South Carolina and is on Facebook, but who doesn’t look like Duane Dibbley, and isn’t the same person at all.
So early reports on who-is-this-guy-anyway may well be getting them mixed up.
By his own admission, he is a racist and a terrorist. No argument there.
What I’m having trouble comprehending are wildly inconsistent (yet apparently reliable) reports like this:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CHARLESTON_SHOOTING_SUSPECT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-06-20-03-09-22
***QUOTE***
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A black drinking buddy of the white man accused of killing nine people at a Charleston church says the suspect told him a week earlier that he planned to shoot up a college campus in the city.
The friend, Christon Scriven, told The Associated Press on Friday that he thought Dylann Roof’s statements were just drunken bluster. Still, Scriven said he was concerned enough that he and another friend, Joey Meek, went out to Roof’s car and retrieved his .45-caliber handgun, hiding it in an air-conditioning vent of a mobile home until they all sobered up.
“He just said he was going to hurt a bunch of people” at the College of Charleston, said Scriven, 22.
***QUOTE***
Other than mental illness, I don’t know what would explain the above.
Certainly 2n is, currently, a racist nutter and (by any sensible definition) a terrorist.
I was thinking maybe, in the initial confusion, the press had been talking to some of 1n’s friends, before they figured out that 1n had nothing to do with it.
But, it seems, 2n actually used to have black friends, but recently came down with a case of the serious crazies. Got his brain stuck in a positive feedback loop of hate, and picked blacks as the target, because hate needs something to focus on?
Interesting note on SC society, though: apparently 2n couldn’t find a group of like-minded murderous racist nutters, so he had to act alone. Kinda reassuring, as is the public reaction there.
Eric,
Please, enough of the mental illness copout. Its become the new Chewbacca defense every time a white male commits a crime.
Same reason passionate segregationist and racist Strom Thurmond has a black daughter. Same reaso parts of the country with the highest level of racism and bigotry have the highest searches for interacial porn and shemales. Same reason the most homophobic preachers get caught with male prostitutes.
Self-loathing and other shit are more likely causes than mental illness.
It’s new Chewbacca defense every time any terrorist commits a terrorist crime. Why not let white males get the benefit of it, too?