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You know the story. I don't need to rehash it in great detail.
A 21-year old man, Dylan Roof, shot up a Bible study a couple of weeks ago at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Nine people are dead because of it.
It's all so repugnant it's difficult to pick out one part of the story and say that it stands out from the rest. And yet there was this...
The police say that Roof "almost didn't go through with it because everyone was so nice to him." (Italics are mine.)
When I read that, my mind stopped cold.
He had been in the church interacting with his victims for over an hour. He had sat with them in their Bible study for over an hour. He had talked and smiled with them. He had watched and listened to them.
They were "nice" to him. Somehow this caught him by surprise.
In that short amount of time, it seems, his hate was melting away. Well, maybe that's too optimistic.
But he, at minimum, maybe for the first time, had begun to see these people as people. He, for once, had a close up view of those he despised. He was seeing for himself and not driven by the second- and third-hand caricatures drawn by others. He was seeing past his easy, lazy prejudices and was glomming onto the fact that these people actually were human with good human qualities.
They were "nice."
A lot can happen when we see people close up.
Seriously, have you ever been in a new situation and been warned about a certain person, that they're weird or should be avoided? You know, someone neatly categorizes them for you? But then you got to know that person anyway and found that they were not so strange or awful after all?
Have you ever formed opinions about someone based on immediate impressions and then spent the time to get to know that person and found that your opinions were premature, primitive and wrong?
I have.
When we see people from a distance, with only fragments of real facts, our minds can make up almost anything about them. For lack of information, too, we are more easily moved by the strong opinions of others. Hearsay takes on the status of fact and spoon-feeds our ignorance.
If Roof had listened to one more beat of his real observations. Had he hesitated for just one moment more and let his victim's niceness sink in just a smidge beyond his hate. Had he slid his judgments and trigger finger to the side for just one more breath.
Who knows?
But instead he fell back on what he was used to-his fantasy facts and his made up stupidity.
Prejudice is generally a product of distance. It's the common plight of man.
Time and time and time again through our tortured earthly ages we've seen that hate is mostly bred by misinformation. And that when people take the time to really know each other often understanding and cooperation follow.
Sadly, we humans...well...what we see we don't often enough learn from. This leaves us with ignorance ignited by angry, greedy, destructive, lust-filled passion.
This is hate.
And never has hate been for a good cause.
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