A Reminder Of Our Ever Present Struggle.
by Rev. Osagyefo Sekou
In the wake of the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church the Reverend Osagyefo Sekou offered his deep condolences to the families of those killed and injured, the congregants and community of that sacred and deeply historically resonant Church.
We have witnessed an act of evil, nothing less than an act of domestic terrorism — an armed man entering a house of worship and cutting down men, women and children in prayer because of the color of their skin.
They were killed because of their love. They welcomed a stranger and gave him a home as he plotted their demise. This is the best of black church — unconditional love. To love in the face of white supremacy is nothing less than a revolutionary act.
The entire collective history of black existence in the United States has been one of violence, of acts of terror. This very country is built on the blood of people of colour, off the profits of human trafficking and slavery, segregation, Jim Crow and the tangible and intangible fruits of ever-present white privilege.
Already we see the swift identification of the murderer — well before his identity was even known — as a “lone wolf”, a “troubled” young man, whom pundits and politicians alike will attribute with misguided ideas and mental illness.
The shooter is not a ‘loner’, but part of a system of white supremacy. To reduce this act to that of a troubled individual is to commit another act of violence. Behind the cloak of individualism is the unexamined legacy of racist state-sanctioned violence. His acts are borne out of the lethal conflagration of near unfettered access to weaponry, deeply ingrained systemic racism and backlash to the national and global movement against extrajudicial police killings and brutality.
Behind the cloak of individualism is the unexamined legacy of racist state-sanctioned violence.
Just as the 1963 murders by white supremacists of four children in the 16th Street Church bombing in Alabama served to tear the scales from the eyes of those who refused to see, the unceasing state-sanctioned brutalization and murder of unarmed black men, women and children, combined with increased visibility via a generation equipped with camera phones and an unrelenting commitment to justice, has created a new moment in the history of our struggle.
The horror of the assassinations in South Carolina and the subsequent response (and lack thereof) from police, politicians, media and the legal system will starkly expose the hollow justifications offered by those intent on continuing a regime of enforced inequality, the inanity of respectability politics, and the near absurd precariousness of breathing while black in “post-racial” America. The shooting at historic Mother Emanuel — a freedom church — is a reminder of our ever present struggle. We who believe in freedom can never rest.
