A White man murdered nine people at a historic African American church in Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday night. The 21-year-old suspect had clear hate motives. Dylann Roof made racially charged statements during his shooting spree and is seen in a photo with a jacket featuring the flag of apartheid South Africa. 

The crime is an act of terrorism. The perpetrator had a wicked political White supremacist agenda that he tried to advance by killing innocent people. The massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a tragic manifestation of bigotry and racism in America, which have been growing more violent over the past few years.

Targeting Black churches was an oft-used tactic by White supremacists during the peak of the civil rights movement in the 1960’s and 70’s. The Ku Klux Klan planted a bomb that killed four Black girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. Arsons and firebombs at African American churches were also common during that era. 

The judicial and political triumphs of equality under the law through activism had pushed explicit supremacists to the fringes of society. But open bigotry is coming back to this country. 

The rise of conservative media, fear of demographic shifts, the 9/11 attacks and wars that followed and election of a Black president have brought racial and religious bigotry to the forefront in America. 

This racism is translating into violence against people of color.

The systematic targeting and shooting of unarmed Black men by the police demonstrate the frightening irrational fear of minorities.

Politicians and media outlets feed the xenophobia for their own benefits. Meanwhile, people of color fall victims of hate crimes.

In 2012, a White supremacist killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. In 2014, an anti-immigration militant shot more than 100 rounds at the Mexican consulate in Austin, Texas. In February, an extremist executed three Arab, Muslim Americans in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

These incidents are a small portion of the politically motivated crimes targeting minorities over the past few years.  

But every time people of color fall victims to racial violence, excuses are made to hide the heinous nature of the violence and avoid facing the devastating hate problem we have in this country.

When Yusor, Deah and Razan were shot in the head in their home in Chapel Hill, police and media outlets rushed to call the crime a parking dispute.

After the Sikh Temple shooting, a Fox News columnist proclaimed that “mental illness, combined with our broken mental health care system, may turn out to be the culprit in Wisconsin.”

Even the Charleston massacre shooter was given the benefit of the doubt. An MSNBC anchor said, “We don’t know his mental condition.”

Republican South Carolina Senator and presidential candidate Lindsay Graham said Wednesday’s massacre is confined to the craziness of the individual shooter.

“I just think he was one of these whacked out kids,” Graham said of the young terrorist who claimed nine lives. “I don’t think it’s anything broader than that. It’s about a young man who is obviously twisted.”

Graham is the same senator who called for designating the Boston Marathon bomber, who is also a young man, as an “army combatant.” 

Diverting the attention from hate crimes and domestic terrorism by stripping their perpetrators of their motives is dangerous. Ignoring hate perpetuates it.

While federal intelligence agencies spend billion of dollars surveilling Muslims, violent right-wing extremists continue to slip past the attention of the authorities. 

Threat of terrorism by self-proclaimed Muslim extremists is real, but it is overemphasized to appear as the only security threat our nation faces. It is not, as evident by Wednesday’s attack.

Hatred in America is reaching an alarming point. A national conversation must start to uproot xenophobia and bigotry. Unfortunately, the mainstream media and politicians continue to fan the flames of hate and look the other way after bigotry explodes into violence.

When armed extremists demonstrated in front of a mosque in Phoenix last month, the conversation on the news was about the demonstrators’ freedom of speech, not the Muslim Americans’ safety. 

But hate has no limits. It does not stop with Arabs or Muslims or minorities. We should stop xenophobia before it consumes the fabric of our society.

From Chapel Hill to Charleston, it is the same terror. All attempts to sugarcoat the White supremacist violence with allegations of mental illness and circumstantial motives justify and fuel White supremacy. Anxiety about demographics and xenophobia are not fringe sentiments in America. We must face them.  

Our condolences to our African American brothers and sisters. Your pain is ours.