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Monday 22 June 2015

Racism/ Indoctrination? Dylan Roof, 21, kills 9 in South Carolina, USA

               At Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, United States, on the evening of June 17, 2015, the members were having a Bible Study. A 21 year old young man, Dylan Storm Roof, opened fire and shot nine black people dead including the senior pastor who is also a South Carolina state senator, Clementa C. Pinckney. A tenth victim was also shot but survived. The church is one of the United States' oldest black churches and has long been a site for community organization around civil rights.
         
                Joseph Meek Jr., of Lexington, S.C., told the Associated Press regarding Roof, “He said blacks were taking over the world. Someone needed to do something about it for the white race”. According to his roommate, Roof expressed his support of racial segregation in the United States and had intended to start a civil war.

Left: Dylan Storm Roof

                 One image from Roof’s Facebook page showed him wearing a jacket decorated with the flags of two nations noted for their white supremacist and racial segregation policies, apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia. Another online photo showed Roof sitting on the hood of his parents' car with an ornamental license plate with a Confederate flag on it.

Right: Roof with a jacket decorated with the flags apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)
       

       Roof attended several schools in two counties, including White Knoll High School in Lexington, in which he repeated the ninth grade, finishing it in another school. After that point, he apparently stopped attending classes, and according to his family, he dropped out of school and spent his time alternating between playing video games and doing drugs.
           
      This was yet another heartbreaking story from the US regarding racism, mass shooting, gun ownership and gun violence. My best wish and prayers similar to most people around the world is that we don’t get to hear and watch such news again. Unfortunately your guess is as good as mine so long as these issues aren’t addressed and children aren’t brought up properly.
 


 

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