JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.GET SAVED NOW- CALL ON JESUS TODAY.THE ONLY SAVIOR OF THE WHOLE EARTH - NO OTHER.
1 COR 15:23-JESUS THE FIRST FRUITS-CHRISTIANS RAPTURED TO JESUS-FIRST FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT-23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.ROMANS 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.(THE PRE-TRIB RAPTURE)
WE ARE CHRISTIANS WE WILL BE TREATED THE SAME.
2 TIMOTHY 3:1-5 (WHY WE ARE PERSECUTED BY THE WORLD)
1 This know also, that in the last days perilous (DANGEROUS) times shall come.
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
MATTHEW 5:10-12
10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
MATTHEW 24:9
9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.
JOHN 15:18-20
18 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me (JESUS) before it hated you.
19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
20 Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.
1 PETER 4:16-19
16 Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.
17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?
18 And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?
19 Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.
REVELATION 6:9-11
9 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain(BEHEADED) for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:
10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
11 And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.
REVELATION 20:4
4 And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands;(WILLINGLY-THEY CHOSE THE IMPLANT) and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
GENESIS 16:11-12
11 And the angel of the LORD said unto her,(HAGAR) Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael;(FATHER OF THE ARAB/MUSLIMS) because the LORD hath heard thy affliction.
12 And he (ISHMAEL) will be a wild man;(ISLAM IS A FAKE AND DANGEROUS SEX FOR MURDER CULT) his hand will be against every man,(ISLAM HATES EVERYONE) and every man's hand against him;(PROTECTING THEMSELVES FROM BEING BEHEADED) and he (ISHMAEL ARAB/MUSLIM) shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.(LITERAL-THE ARABS LIVE WITH THEIR BRETHERN JEWS)
JOHN 16:2
2 They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.(ISLAM MURDERS IN THE NAME OF MOON GOD ALLAH OF ISLAM)
UPDATED-JULY 01,2015-05:00PM
WELL THE CHRISTIAN HATERS AT CNN.AND BROOK BALWIN ARE AT IT ALREADY. IT ONLY TOOK TWO WEEKS TO GET A CHRISTIAN ON WHO SAYS HE WAS A RACIST BECAUSE HE WENT TO A CHARISMATIC CHURCH.TIM PARRISH CLAIMES HE WAS A CHRISTIAN RACIST.AND WANTED TO BURN DOWN A BLACK PERSONS HOME.HERE WE GO CHRISTIANS.THE RACIST-BIGOT-HATER TALK AGAINST US IS HEATING UP. CNN LIKE USUAL AND BROOK BALDWIN LEADING THE WAY.IF USE CAN NOT SEE THAT US CHRISTIANS FREE SPEECH AND FREEDOM OF RELIGION IS BEING LIMITED TO NOTHING.USE BETTER WAKE UP.AND START TALKING UP FOR CHRIST IANITY AND JESUS.BEFORE OUR RIGHTS WILL BE GONE.NOW THAT THE SODOMIT ES ARE ALOWED TO MARRY IN ALL 50 STATES.THE LEFT-WING LIBERAL-DEMOCR ATES HAVE TO POUR ON THE CHRISTIAN HATE.TO FORCE US TO MARRY SODOMITES IN OUR CHURCHES.JUST LIKE THE FORCE THE WORLD FORCES DOWN ISRAELS THROAT.NOW WE CHRISTIANS WILL BE FORCED DOWN OUR THROATS TO MARRY SODOMITES.OR WE WILL BE CALLED-RACIST-HATE-BIGOTS. FOR KEEPING GODS WORDS AND LAWS.AND NOT WILLING TO BEG TO THE GODLESS LEFTS.POLITICALLY CORRECT LUNACY.
How hate took hold of me: My friend and I could have been Dylann Roof. How do we get the poison of racism out of more American bloodstreams? BY Tim Parrish-NEW YORK DAILY NEWS-Sunday, June 21, 2015, 5:00 AM
Tim Parrish wrote memoir, 'Fear and What Follows: The Violent Education of a Christian Racist.'I grew up a Southern racist. I learned how to hate at home and at church. I drank from the same poisonous well as Dylann Roof.I was raised in Baton Rouge during the 1960s and 1970s, and I believe that grappling with my own racism gives me some insight into how someone comes to loathe those of a different skin color.Three times, Southern Baptist churches I belonged to voted not to allow in African Americans ("agitators"), despite the fact that no African Americans lived close to our church.But don't think we wore hoods or burned crosses or physically hurt black people (at least not until later, when I got to high school). My parents were caring and loving. Most of the adults around me were all the clichés used to describe good people: hard-working, God fearing, salt-of-the-earth.
MAN WHO RADICALIZED DYLAN ROOF: BLACKS ARE 'PRIVILEGED'
My parents even tried to be respectful when face-to-face with blacks. My mother jerked me out of a department store when, as a 4-year-old, I called a black boy a "jigaboo." She told me we only used that word in our house; outside, the word was "Negro." My father harbored a black man in his bunk on the train home from World War II because blacks and Jews were being beaten by roving mobs of white soldiers.
But at the same time, they were afraid that blacks in general "threatened" our values and would be the ruination of white culture, whatever that was. And because of fear and a desire to fit in, I got on board with the escalating racism and violence as my high school naturally desegregated and African Americans moved toward our neighborhood, white flight beginning slowly and becoming a complete migration by the time I graduated in 1976.I participated in gang fights, raised a chain to a black boy three years younger than my 15 years and even considered going along with talk about burning some black people's house after a friend was stabbed. I did all of this even though I knew it was morally wrong, even though one of my best friends was an African-American basketball teammate, even though one of my most influential teachers was black.I did it because I, too, had swallowed the line that African Americans were coming to take everything that was ours, which ultimately caused us whites to move out and go on to live our lives pretty much the same and sometimes even more segregated than before.So could Dylann Roof have been one of us? Yes. My best friend and guide in all things racist never shot anyone, but I saw him savage many young black men, throw a ninja star at a fleeing black stranger and wave his .44 Magnum with intent.
RELATIVES OF CHARLESTON SHOOTING VICTIMS OFFER FORGIVENESS
But were my friend and I Dylann Roofs? I don't think so. Psychosis, psychopathy or some other mental illness was a likely ingredient in the concoction that drove that young man to murder, as surely as it drives so many in the rapidly growing gallery of mass murderers.At some level, though, the same forces — ideology, delusion, rage, racist speech — that drove us, drove him. And though the calculated assassination of nine people with whom Roof had sat for an hour in prayer meeting is truly a horror beyond any words I can wield, these murders are simply an extreme symptom of a more subtle racism and paranoia programmed into many — certainly my own and perhaps the majority of — white American hearts, even into the hearts of many liberals.Perhaps we see a neighborhood with many black faces, even of our same class, and wonder if there is something lesser about this place. We see on TV a photo of a black teen in a hoodie, a teen once arrested for marijuana, and we wonder for a moment if maybe he wasn't a threat to the man who tracked and killed him. We hear of black-on-black crime or a black man assaulting a white man and we consider for a second that maybe there is a racial basis for these acts.Maybe these thoughts arise only in my mind, and I simply project them onto other whites. But I don't think so. I believe that we have been so thoroughly indoctrinated by the mythology of blacks bringing violence and crime to our white neighborhoods, that the impulse to distrust arrives before any conscious thought.This is not accusation. What gets injected into us as beliefs is not fully our choice. What is our choice is to be constantly vigilant, to deconstruct the assumptions we make, to combat impulses we may have that lead us in the direction of thinking we are somehow the generalized victim and the more civilized color.It is often at this point in conversations about racism that somebody wants to, strangely, talk about how Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton aren't called out for their "racism," or how young black men kill each other at a terrifying pace, or how an African American personally wronged the person to whom I am speaking, or how affirmative action takes from deserving white people.These are conversations I am perfectly willing to have, but they are diversions from the topic of racism, a topic that often inflames a sense of having been affronted or wronged by an African American or African Americans as a supposedly privileged whole.
VICTIM'S SON: DYLANN ROOF WANTED MASSACRE TO END IN SUICIDE
And lest you think I'm talking from a position of superiority, I admit that some of the above thoughts, and worse, still pop into my head. And on exceptionally bad days, if a black person does something I don't like, the N-word almost reaches my lips. The racism is still in me, just as misogyny, homophobia and other prejudices are still in me.The cliché, furthered by our election of a black President, is that "we have made great strides toward eradicating racism" in America. And only a fool would say that America isn't better now that it is beyond open segregation and Jim Crow. But we are obviously still a country corrupted by these ideas, and it is not as complex to understand as we sometimes wish to believe.Racism is an extreme fear and distrust of The Other, an Other that is still seen, in many cases, as lazy, violent and ignorant, and, Dammit, desegregation ended decades ago and Jim Crow never officially existed outside the South so why don't these people pull themselves up already?, a statement I have heard dozens of variations on.Racist thought settles into an ahistorical and unexamined place, then recognizes only the evidence that suits the racist argument. But at root, racism is, I repeat, one group's fear and paranoia of another group that has been historically marginalized and caricatured.We often hesitate to call racism by its name because we are wary of calling someone a racist, perhaps rightfully so, because of the inflammatory nature of such an accusation.But isn't it obvious that just this week, Donald Trump's broad-brush description of Mexican immigrants was racist? Isn't it troubling that he spoke of these Others as "rapists" and the next day Roof reiterated the long-held terror that black men will rape our white women before he pulled the trigger on nine people? Is it not racist that Obama's American citizenship has been questioned over and over? Isn't there a racist element to the nearly clinical paranoia that Obama is coming to take people's guns when he can barely get a bill passed through Congress? And these are the things that pass for coded messages. When I visit home, the N-word still flies pretty freely at times from white people in my vicinity, and I can guarantee that the N-word, or words like it, fly freely from some white people in places up here in Connecticut and in many other places in America.The Confederate flag is still flying near the state house in South Carolina, too, and when Gov. Nikki Haley is asked about it, she dodges the question and speaks of healing, as if healing means we can't even grapple with what it means to officially display a historical symbol of oppression, brutality and debasement of African Americans — one which also appeared on Roof's car.I believe that Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and some of the Republican Party engages in persistent, if carefully modulated, race-baiting. I have sat in houses and seen that talk directly fuel racism, and I would bet any amount that Roof was fueled by similar fear-mongering.
Who is to say exactly how much fuel was needed to set his finger to the trigger, but I will say that hateful speech didn't help stay it.What do we do, then, about racism and racist violence? Of course, we continue the complex and seemingly Sisyphean solutions of pushing legislation that diminishes, and perhaps eventually eliminates, both the disenfranchisement of African-American voters and subtle institutional racism.But mainly I can only offer up what I did and what I continue to do: be constantly vigilant of how I am programmed and then work to illuminate my own darkness and walk back from my own ingrained racist beliefs. Perhaps Dr. Martin Luther King's arc of history does bend toward justice, but only if each of us torques the small section that is ours.Parrish is author of the memoir, "Fear and What Follows: The Violent Education of a Christian Racist," and is the Coordinator of the MFA program in creative writing at Southern Connecticut State University.
WE ARE CHRISTIANS WE WILL BE TREATED THE SAME.
2 TIMOTHY 3:1-5 (WHY WE ARE PERSECUTED BY THE WORLD)
1 This know also, that in the last days perilous (DANGEROUS) times shall come.
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
MATTHEW 5:10-12
10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
MATTHEW 24:9
9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.
JOHN 15:18-20
18 If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me (JESUS) before it hated you.
19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
20 Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.
1 PETER 4:16-19
16 Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.
17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?
18 And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?
19 Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.
REVELATION 6:9-11
9 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain(BEHEADED) for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:
10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
11 And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.
REVELATION 20:4
4 And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands;(WILLINGLY-THEY CHOSE THE IMPLANT) and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
GENESIS 16:11-12
11 And the angel of the LORD said unto her,(HAGAR) Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael;(FATHER OF THE ARAB/MUSLIMS) because the LORD hath heard thy affliction.
12 And he (ISHMAEL) will be a wild man;(ISLAM IS A FAKE AND DANGEROUS SEX FOR MURDER CULT) his hand will be against every man,(ISLAM HATES EVERYONE) and every man's hand against him;(PROTECTING THEMSELVES FROM BEING BEHEADED) and he (ISHMAEL ARAB/MUSLIM) shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.(LITERAL-THE ARABS LIVE WITH THEIR BRETHERN JEWS)
JOHN 16:2
2 They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.(ISLAM MURDERS IN THE NAME OF MOON GOD ALLAH OF ISLAM)
UPDATED-JULY 01,2015-05:00PM
WELL THE CHRISTIAN HATERS AT CNN.AND BROOK BALWIN ARE AT IT ALREADY. IT ONLY TOOK TWO WEEKS TO GET A CHRISTIAN ON WHO SAYS HE WAS A RACIST BECAUSE HE WENT TO A CHARISMATIC CHURCH.TIM PARRISH CLAIMES HE WAS A CHRISTIAN RACIST.AND WANTED TO BURN DOWN A BLACK PERSONS HOME.HERE WE GO CHRISTIANS.THE RACIST-BIGOT-HATER TALK AGAINST US IS HEATING UP. CNN LIKE USUAL AND BROOK BALDWIN LEADING THE WAY.IF USE CAN NOT SEE THAT US CHRISTIANS FREE SPEECH AND FREEDOM OF RELIGION IS BEING LIMITED TO NOTHING.USE BETTER WAKE UP.AND START TALKING UP FOR CHRIST IANITY AND JESUS.BEFORE OUR RIGHTS WILL BE GONE.NOW THAT THE SODOMIT ES ARE ALOWED TO MARRY IN ALL 50 STATES.THE LEFT-WING LIBERAL-DEMOCR ATES HAVE TO POUR ON THE CHRISTIAN HATE.TO FORCE US TO MARRY SODOMITES IN OUR CHURCHES.JUST LIKE THE FORCE THE WORLD FORCES DOWN ISRAELS THROAT.NOW WE CHRISTIANS WILL BE FORCED DOWN OUR THROATS TO MARRY SODOMITES.OR WE WILL BE CALLED-RACIST-HATE-BIGOTS. FOR KEEPING GODS WORDS AND LAWS.AND NOT WILLING TO BEG TO THE GODLESS LEFTS.POLITICALLY CORRECT LUNACY.
How hate took hold of me: My friend and I could have been Dylann Roof. How do we get the poison of racism out of more American bloodstreams? BY Tim Parrish-NEW YORK DAILY NEWS-Sunday, June 21, 2015, 5:00 AM
Tim Parrish wrote memoir, 'Fear and What Follows: The Violent Education of a Christian Racist.'I grew up a Southern racist. I learned how to hate at home and at church. I drank from the same poisonous well as Dylann Roof.I was raised in Baton Rouge during the 1960s and 1970s, and I believe that grappling with my own racism gives me some insight into how someone comes to loathe those of a different skin color.Three times, Southern Baptist churches I belonged to voted not to allow in African Americans ("agitators"), despite the fact that no African Americans lived close to our church.But don't think we wore hoods or burned crosses or physically hurt black people (at least not until later, when I got to high school). My parents were caring and loving. Most of the adults around me were all the clichés used to describe good people: hard-working, God fearing, salt-of-the-earth.
MAN WHO RADICALIZED DYLAN ROOF: BLACKS ARE 'PRIVILEGED'
My parents even tried to be respectful when face-to-face with blacks. My mother jerked me out of a department store when, as a 4-year-old, I called a black boy a "jigaboo." She told me we only used that word in our house; outside, the word was "Negro." My father harbored a black man in his bunk on the train home from World War II because blacks and Jews were being beaten by roving mobs of white soldiers.
But at the same time, they were afraid that blacks in general "threatened" our values and would be the ruination of white culture, whatever that was. And because of fear and a desire to fit in, I got on board with the escalating racism and violence as my high school naturally desegregated and African Americans moved toward our neighborhood, white flight beginning slowly and becoming a complete migration by the time I graduated in 1976.I participated in gang fights, raised a chain to a black boy three years younger than my 15 years and even considered going along with talk about burning some black people's house after a friend was stabbed. I did all of this even though I knew it was morally wrong, even though one of my best friends was an African-American basketball teammate, even though one of my most influential teachers was black.I did it because I, too, had swallowed the line that African Americans were coming to take everything that was ours, which ultimately caused us whites to move out and go on to live our lives pretty much the same and sometimes even more segregated than before.So could Dylann Roof have been one of us? Yes. My best friend and guide in all things racist never shot anyone, but I saw him savage many young black men, throw a ninja star at a fleeing black stranger and wave his .44 Magnum with intent.
RELATIVES OF CHARLESTON SHOOTING VICTIMS OFFER FORGIVENESS
But were my friend and I Dylann Roofs? I don't think so. Psychosis, psychopathy or some other mental illness was a likely ingredient in the concoction that drove that young man to murder, as surely as it drives so many in the rapidly growing gallery of mass murderers.At some level, though, the same forces — ideology, delusion, rage, racist speech — that drove us, drove him. And though the calculated assassination of nine people with whom Roof had sat for an hour in prayer meeting is truly a horror beyond any words I can wield, these murders are simply an extreme symptom of a more subtle racism and paranoia programmed into many — certainly my own and perhaps the majority of — white American hearts, even into the hearts of many liberals.Perhaps we see a neighborhood with many black faces, even of our same class, and wonder if there is something lesser about this place. We see on TV a photo of a black teen in a hoodie, a teen once arrested for marijuana, and we wonder for a moment if maybe he wasn't a threat to the man who tracked and killed him. We hear of black-on-black crime or a black man assaulting a white man and we consider for a second that maybe there is a racial basis for these acts.Maybe these thoughts arise only in my mind, and I simply project them onto other whites. But I don't think so. I believe that we have been so thoroughly indoctrinated by the mythology of blacks bringing violence and crime to our white neighborhoods, that the impulse to distrust arrives before any conscious thought.This is not accusation. What gets injected into us as beliefs is not fully our choice. What is our choice is to be constantly vigilant, to deconstruct the assumptions we make, to combat impulses we may have that lead us in the direction of thinking we are somehow the generalized victim and the more civilized color.It is often at this point in conversations about racism that somebody wants to, strangely, talk about how Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton aren't called out for their "racism," or how young black men kill each other at a terrifying pace, or how an African American personally wronged the person to whom I am speaking, or how affirmative action takes from deserving white people.These are conversations I am perfectly willing to have, but they are diversions from the topic of racism, a topic that often inflames a sense of having been affronted or wronged by an African American or African Americans as a supposedly privileged whole.
VICTIM'S SON: DYLANN ROOF WANTED MASSACRE TO END IN SUICIDE
And lest you think I'm talking from a position of superiority, I admit that some of the above thoughts, and worse, still pop into my head. And on exceptionally bad days, if a black person does something I don't like, the N-word almost reaches my lips. The racism is still in me, just as misogyny, homophobia and other prejudices are still in me.The cliché, furthered by our election of a black President, is that "we have made great strides toward eradicating racism" in America. And only a fool would say that America isn't better now that it is beyond open segregation and Jim Crow. But we are obviously still a country corrupted by these ideas, and it is not as complex to understand as we sometimes wish to believe.Racism is an extreme fear and distrust of The Other, an Other that is still seen, in many cases, as lazy, violent and ignorant, and, Dammit, desegregation ended decades ago and Jim Crow never officially existed outside the South so why don't these people pull themselves up already?, a statement I have heard dozens of variations on.Racist thought settles into an ahistorical and unexamined place, then recognizes only the evidence that suits the racist argument. But at root, racism is, I repeat, one group's fear and paranoia of another group that has been historically marginalized and caricatured.We often hesitate to call racism by its name because we are wary of calling someone a racist, perhaps rightfully so, because of the inflammatory nature of such an accusation.But isn't it obvious that just this week, Donald Trump's broad-brush description of Mexican immigrants was racist? Isn't it troubling that he spoke of these Others as "rapists" and the next day Roof reiterated the long-held terror that black men will rape our white women before he pulled the trigger on nine people? Is it not racist that Obama's American citizenship has been questioned over and over? Isn't there a racist element to the nearly clinical paranoia that Obama is coming to take people's guns when he can barely get a bill passed through Congress? And these are the things that pass for coded messages. When I visit home, the N-word still flies pretty freely at times from white people in my vicinity, and I can guarantee that the N-word, or words like it, fly freely from some white people in places up here in Connecticut and in many other places in America.The Confederate flag is still flying near the state house in South Carolina, too, and when Gov. Nikki Haley is asked about it, she dodges the question and speaks of healing, as if healing means we can't even grapple with what it means to officially display a historical symbol of oppression, brutality and debasement of African Americans — one which also appeared on Roof's car.I believe that Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and some of the Republican Party engages in persistent, if carefully modulated, race-baiting. I have sat in houses and seen that talk directly fuel racism, and I would bet any amount that Roof was fueled by similar fear-mongering.
Who is to say exactly how much fuel was needed to set his finger to the trigger, but I will say that hateful speech didn't help stay it.What do we do, then, about racism and racist violence? Of course, we continue the complex and seemingly Sisyphean solutions of pushing legislation that diminishes, and perhaps eventually eliminates, both the disenfranchisement of African-American voters and subtle institutional racism.But mainly I can only offer up what I did and what I continue to do: be constantly vigilant of how I am programmed and then work to illuminate my own darkness and walk back from my own ingrained racist beliefs. Perhaps Dr. Martin Luther King's arc of history does bend toward justice, but only if each of us torques the small section that is ours.Parrish is author of the memoir, "Fear and What Follows: The Violent Education of a Christian Racist," and is the Coordinator of the MFA program in creative writing at Southern Connecticut State University.
