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I used to live in Charleston from 2007-2011 and remember there being lots of open illicit substance sales, multiple armed robberies I heard about every year and gunshot murders downtown. I even had a friend get shot in a failed robbery and nearly bleed to death.
I told someone on these forums be careful downtown in 2014, and every local flipped on me. They said "Charleston is safe now." And then I read this. Now that I live in a city with 4x the population I still don't hear about horrible things like this. Throw in the murdering cop in north charleston and we've got ourselves a hate crime bonanza. There still seems to be pretty distinct racial segregation of neighborhoods and racial violence from both sides.
I will tell you all this. Be careful in the sketchier areas downtown and always keep your guard and walk in groups at night. It's common sense really, but it's even more imperative to do it there than many other cities you might be able to get away with it.
While I really sincerely feel sorry for the victims and their families, having just tuned into CNN, the first thing you hear coming out of the anchor's mouth is 'a WHITE MALE has opened fire with a firearm inside a predominately BLACK church'. And then over and over again they repeat the same thing of a white male in his 20s attacking and killing people inside the chruch.
I just find it annoying as HELL that the media has no problem declaring the race of the perpetrator over and over again as long as the suspect is non-black, but they will NEVER do the same if the suspect is black. I know its a rant and all, but it just pisses me off to no end that a number of media outlets seem bent on stirring sh$t up that will inevitably get blacks angry and making them feel like victims all the time, yet when blacks attack and murder non-blacks on a far greater scale, it will usually be swept under the rug because that too would get black people angry.
I really wish the media would just get their sh$t together and decide to go one way or the other. Namely if you're going to name to the race/ethnicity of the suspect(s)/victim(s) in a crime, then go ALL THE WAY with it. If not then don't do it at all. Don't choose to name the race of a suspect or a cop ONLY when they're white or non-black, but then go out of your to not mention the race of a suspect when they're black. That's just hypocritical and unfair reporting.
Again I feel sad that those people lost their lives for no reason, but it just really bugs me that every few minutes I hear 'a white male' is the suspect or in the case of the pool party incident, a 'white police officer' over and over. Yet if the suspect was black CNN and other media outlets would NEVER do the same.
So sad and sick. I feel ashamed to be from the south in times like these. I honestly can't stand to live around garbage like the man who murdered these innocent people. Regardless of what differences we might have, this is despicable in every way imaginable. I hope they catch this man quick and I hope he is taken alive. I know that the pastor of this church was also a state senator and very outspoken on many politically dividing issues, and I have to believe that the pastors political status played a large role in this crime.
A white man killed 9 black people who were attending church, yet you believe this doesn't have any racial aspects.
For all we know at this point the suspect could have been targeting Christians or just looking for a random group of people and came upon the church before reaching a bar.
Until the suspect is found and captured it is pointless to assume the reason behind this senseless violence. Automatically assuming this was race related doesn't do any good at this point just like it would not do any good if the races were reversed. In fact it does far more harm than good.
Hopefully this animal will be found and brought to justice and the community can use this tragic incident to come together and build a stronger Charleston...but playing the race game isn't going to make that happen.
What we know so far: We know 8 or 9 people are reportedly dead. The shots that were fired, were reportedly from a white man in his 20's. The victims were reported as black. There has not been any mention of mental illness as a justification or a rationalization, at least from what I have ascertained. Authorities have yet to identify or apprehend the gunman, so it is impossible to say, with any certainty, what was going on in his mind.
We do not know what the motives of the shooter were. Everything on this tread is conjecture. This may not be the most appropriate way of understanding any event or tragedy. We only have part of the story. It does not look like it this story is going to end well, to say the least. But to jump to conclusions I think is wrong and even dangerous. I think knowing all of the facts is the way to handle any problem. Second guessing is just that, guessing.
Cooler heads need to prevail.
What's the point of your post to me?
Again, the spector of mental illness being the cause of the murders was brought up in this thread. The poster was responding directly to thay post that brought up mental illness being the cause.
The rest of your post is irrelevant to any of my posts in this thread.
Also, the chief of police said he thought it was a hate crime. And I think he said they would pursue it as a hate crime So that's pretty good indication that it was a hate crime.
But I didn't post anything about a hate crime. Or the motives of the shooter.
So I don't know why you responded to me in that manner, maybe you meant to respond to another poster got me by accident?
For all we know at this point the suspect could have been targeting Christians or just looking for a random group of people and came upon the church before reaching a bar.
Until the suspect is found and captured it is pointless to assume the reason behind this senseless violence. Automatically assuming this was race related doesn't do any good at this point just like it would not do any good if the races were reversed. In fact it does far more harm than good.
Hopefully this animal will be found and brought to justice and the community can use this tragic incident to come together and build a stronger Charleston...but playing the race game isn't going to make that happen.
The chief of police said he thought it was a hate crime. So people saying it was a hate crime are in the company of the chief of police and aren't jumping to conclusions. They are listening to the government official heading the manhunt and investigation into the murders.
All of these lectures about not jumping to conclusions don't fly when the chief of police said it was a hate crime.
Location: When you take flak it means you are on target
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No offense to the god folks on here - but where was their SECURITY?
Anybody ever heard of someone carrying a GUN, so they can SHOOT BACK?
With all the rhetoric pro and anti-gun in this country NOBODY ever seems to actually have a gun when they need one in these shootings.
In the few cases where an armed citizen or cop has been present or arrived rapidly the shooter has either given up or offed themselves immediately without harming anyone else.
Every church should have an armed security team. I'm not saying AR's flaking the alter, but an off duty plain clothes officer or other trained church member. Heck I have a friend who is a pastor and TEACHES firearm safety on the side. Someone attacks his church and they might get a big surprise!
While I really sincerely feel sorry for the victims and their families, having just tuned into CNN, the first thing you hear coming out of the anchor's mouth is 'a WHITE MALE has opened fire with a firearm inside a predominately BLACK church'. And then over and over again they repeat the same thing of a white male in his 20s attacking and killing people inside the chruch.
I just find it annoying as HELL that the media has no problem declaring the race of the perpetrator over and over again as long as the suspect is non-black, but they will NEVER do the same if the suspect is black. I know its a rant and all, but it just pisses me off to no end that a number of media outlets seem bent on stirring sh$t up that will inevitably get blacks angry and making them feel like victims all the time, yet when blacks attack and murder non-blacks on a far greater scale, it will usually be swept under the rug because that too would get black people angry.
I really wish the media would just get their sh$t together and decide to go one way or the other. Namely if you're going to name to the race/ethnicity of the suspect(s)/victim(s) in a crime, then go ALL THE WAY with it. If not then don't do it at all. Don't choose to name the race of a suspect or a cop ONLY when they're white or non-black, but then go out of your to not mention the race of a suspect when they're black. That's just hypocritical and unfair reporting.
Again I feel sad that those people lost their lives for no reason, but it just really bugs me that every few minutes I hear 'a white male' is the suspect or in the case of the pool party incident, a 'white police officer' over and over. Yet if the suspect was black CNN and other media outlets would NEVER do the same.
You live in alternate media reality than the one in the real world.
Such coverage may reinforce biases against black and Latino defendants even in the absence of specific pretrial publicity about a given defendant’s case. Here are some examples from the extensive research literature detailing the varied and subtle ways in which television and print news stereotype blacks and Latinos in crime coverage:
1. Blacks and Latinos are more likely than whites to appear as lawbreakers in news—particularly when the news is focusing on violent crime.18 Blacks and Latinos are more likely to appear as perpetrators than victims.19 Blacks are overrepresented as perpetrators of violent crime when news coverage is compared with arrest rates.20 Work that engages in “inter-reality” comparisons suggests the media portrayal is somewhat less distorted than the comparison of the number of black, white, and Latino perpetrators might imply.21 Nonetheless, the picture is troubling, suggesting that news cultivates the perception of blacks and Latinos as lawbreakers.
2. In contrast, whites are overrepresented as victims of violence and as law-enforcers, while blacks are underrepresented in these sympathetic roles.22
3. These patterns are more disturbing when one considers that blacks and Latinos may not appear as frequently as whites outside the crime-news context. Because of the values that define the newsworthy, blacks in criminal roles tend to outnumber blacks in socially positive roles in newscasts and daily newspapers.23 In some areas, at least, Latinos may receive even worse treatment than blacks. Chiricos and Eschholz examined three weeks of local-news programming in Orlando and found that one in twenty whites appearing on the local television news was a criminal suspect compared with one in eight blacks and one in four Latinos.24Z
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