Roof owed an apology for being a product of the society that created him
DYLANN ROOF is not a terrorist. He is not a racist. He is not a monster. He is not a murderer. And he is certainly not singularly responsible for having allegedly killed nine people.
Roof is the product of a world that created him. He does not have complete agency. We created the racist society into which poor Roof was born. It is our collective racism and hatred that are the building blocks of the Roof tragedy.
In fact, Roof is a victim of society. It is society that is the real criminal responsible for the death of those nine people whose names now escape me. When will society man up and take responsibility for ruining the lives of young people like Roof ? Enough is enough. Roof did not even have a chance to be an innocent young adult and now might have a criminal record because of a sick society that infected him with its racial sickness.
This is why it is also important to realise that there are many victims here. There are the innocent people who are dead, their families and their friends. There is Roof, victim of circumstance. And there are, of course, Roof ’s friends and family who, sadly, are not getting any coverage from the media. As the judge said at Roof’s first court appearance, these other folks are victims too.
The least we can do to ensure complete justice is to properly examine the life history of Roof. Some reports already suggest the poor kid took medication that sometimes led to violent outbursts. We must get to the bottom of this possibility.
Pharmaceutical companies have a long history of flooding the market with dangerous substances to push profits rather than to enhance the quality of our lives. If Roof turns out to be a victim of big pharma injustice, every single one of us must be outraged at the consequences of rampant capitalism.
No person should be morally or legally held responsible for actions that flow from chemicals that were irresponsibly given to them because of corporate greed. We need to fix the distribution channels that make strong drugs too easily available to naive young people like poor Dylann Roof. And if that story is true, the company responsible for the drug must be pressured through consumer activism to pay for every cent that is required to heal Roof so that he can become a healthy young citizen again.
Perhaps the saddest part of the whole tragedy is that Roof ’s empathy for other people shone so brightly for an hour in that church. For a whole hour he was in com- munion with people very different to him. He reportedly tells us that he almost did not shoot any of them because they were so nice to him. I confess I was moved to tears.
What that shows is that it would be cruel for us to lock Roof up and scapegoat him for society’s ills. In that hour before he allegedly shot the nine people, he showed an ability to empathise, and therein lies hope for him to yet heal fully and so complete the potential he has to reach out to communities that are alien to the one he comes from.
Prison would kill his humanity, and not only would a guilty verdict make him unfairly pay for the sick society that created him, a guilty verdict would also show what brutes we are. Do we not have it in us to take restorative justice seriously, like some of the dead people’s relatives who have already forgiven Roof? We can and must learn from them.
And President Obama is right. If guns were not easily available, then those nine people would have been alive today. Roof is the victim of a society that allows too many guns in circulation. They are too easy to obtain. Shame on lobbyists and legislators who refuse to agree to gun control reforms.
You killed those nine people, and not Roof. Roof precedes a history of gun violence.
Society owes Roof an apology. We – white and black people – let him down. Gun owners and lobbyists let him down. His parents let him down. Drug companies let him down. And even the old South African flag, inspiring racial hatred, let him down. We ought to regret, as a society, not giving Roof a chance to be a healthy, normal, productive citizen of the world.
Why do we owe him this apology? Why should we not lock him up? Why must we protect him from those who think he’s a terrorist? Why must we forgive him and even ask his forgiveness of us? The reason is self-evident, but in case you have just arrived on planet earth, unfamiliar with our history this side of the Milky Way, I will tell you the reason: Dylann Roof is white.