Killing Institutions
Seeing anti-Black mass murder through another lens
Seven years ago, when Dylann Roof carried out mass murder at a Bible Study in Charleston, S.C., he attacked more than individuals. He attacked institutions.
When tragedy hits, we focus on those attacked (or their survivors), as we should. Still, in the aftermath of these events, be it months, years, or decades afterward, those of us with the range (academicians, scholars, wya?) ought to revisit the events and look at which institutions were affected and how.
In remembrance of the Emanuel Nine, this article considers which institutions were targeted during the Charleston church shooting of 2015.
There was an attack on the Black church. Of all the institutions built by Black people in America, the Black church is the oldest, most iconic, and arguably most successful. The Black church is the mother of many other Black institutions. As such, Black churches become targets for grievances that have no straightforward connections to organized Christian worship. This is because the Black church is a proxy for Black self-identity, and for people committed to the idea that the “Black community” is somehow separate from the rest of America, the Black church is a decent stand-in for Black government.
Emanuel A.M.E. Church has a specific history of being the sister church of Mother Bethel in Philadelphia and of having Denmark Vesey as one of its founders. Beyond its existence as a faith community, Mother Emanuel shows with unusual transparency the implications of Black Christianity and the potential of an organized community center.
There was an attack on Black politics, which is very much a child of the Black church. Black politicians often get their first taste of real-world politics by observing and participating in the administration of church organizations. Churches are also famously adept at anointing and promoting politicians as community advocates. Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a state senator, was but one bright star in a galaxy of preachers local and national, past and present, whose credibility in the pulpit translated into political and legislative influence. For people who don’t believe Blacks should be (or can be) integrated into the public decision-making process, it would make sense to strike at Black people and Black institutions of uncommon agency.
There was an attack on the Black family, which is perhaps the most resilient institution America has yet produced. When Dylann Roof stood up to fire his first shot, he aimed for a woman in her 80s. Her great-nephew stood up to talk Roof down and died defending her. A niece and a great-great niece who was also there survived by playing dead. Four generations in one family were marked by blood or trauma.
Why? The attacker explained: “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” The connection between church mothers and rapists only exists in the minds of people that acknowledge a symbiotic relationship between the Black church, as a broadcaster of life-sustaining values, and the Black family, as the producer of Black men and women.
On that note, there was an attack on Black womanhood and manhood. The Black church and Black family have uniquely contested the dehumanization of the enslaved and their descendants in both word and deed. Both institutions have vigorously reimagined what it means to be female and male in various periods of the Black sojourn in America.
Those of us who go to Bible study know that, while anybody can come, the most faithful in attendance are the truly die-hard Christians in a given congregation. That those people — pastors, church mothers, church youth — were targeted and smeared as rapists and subversive agents is not just Roof’s indictment of the church, but a cry that nothing the Black family produces can escape the degenerate tendencies inherent to Black men and women, be they ever so far-fetched.
There was an attack on Black education. Church Bible study is the very womb of Black education as experienced by the formerly enslaved and their descendants. Among the slain were seven college graduates and five professionals involved in some aspect of education.
There was an internal attack on Black spirituality, which was a very curious development. The issue of offering forgiveness, which is central to Christianity, became a point of argument and nuanced criticism because of the ways forgiveness seems to provide cheap atonement for anti-Black racism. In any of its forms, Black spirituality should center on the spiritual health of Black people. Centering proper spirituality around a desire to affect white people is problematic, to say the least.
Finally, and most subtly, there was a betrayal of Black hospitality. Though Black people have been assigned a race in this country, by and large, Black people do not believe race should be socially meaningful in the distribution of goods or in the execution of justice. This sense of egalitarianism prevails in spaces where the Black social order prevails.
Roof was welcomed into a space where racism could be presumed dead, an atmosphere so thick with agape that hatred should have choked. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we learned that love may cast out fear, but it didn’t cast out hate. Almost immediately afterwards, Black America’s steepled asylum took a more discriminating stance.
The way America is set up, Black people live on a floating city, staying above water by the help of various institutions. Whenever one of us is attacked, the rafts we’re floating on also take a hit. As this day of grim remembrance dims into sunset, take a moment to be thankful for the institutions that helped tide you over.
Peace and healing, fam. ✌🏿
