Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ Is this some long hot summer in the 60’s? It sure seems like it. Especially this morning.
“9 People Dead in a Charleston Church Massacre”.
I woke up early this morning, fixed myself a cup of coffee, and turned on CNN to check out what was going on out there in the larger world. “9 People Dead in a Charleston Church Massacre”. Some crackpot white gunman walks into an AME church and starts blazing away.
After a few sips of my coffee, CNN cut to a press conference with the Charleston Chief of Police and the Mayor who classified the massacre as a “hate crime”. Some wretched soul out there living on stereotypes and hate walked into a African Methodist Episcopal church and started killing in a style reminiscent of the “Birmingham Church Bombings” when “Dynamite” Bob Chambliss murdered all those Sunday school youngsters with a blast over 50 years ago.
If this summer doesn’t demonstrate that stereotypes and hate are still with us I don’t know what would.
I strongly believe that stereotyping and hate are not a permanent part of the human condition because I’ve seen many examples of persons growing out of that mindset and emotional reactiveness through life experience and learning to examine and alter their thinking. I have no doubt that educational methods could be employed to teach both youngsters and adults to recognize their stereotypes and their reactiveness and make changes in the way they view others and react to them. Imperfectly, because disturbed folks with anomalous brain conditions are out there–that’s fact of life.
Stereotypical thinking and hate doesn’t work. It creates major challenges for the people it infects. This young killer is in the crosshairs of the FBI for a “hate crime” involving the deaths of 9 people. His future is grim.
