STUPID AND VIOLENT

Let's take a squint at Dylann Roof, the presumed Charleston church shooter.

I read the document thought to be his "manifesto," something he whipped together in great haste: full of typos and ellipses. Perhaps he thought he wouldn't survive his adventure in racial action.

(Maybe now he'll have time to correct and clarify.)

He says he was changed by the Trayvon Martin case. He noted the firestorm of media coverage and wondered what the big deal was. George Zimmerman was obviously "in the right."

(And I think it's true. Zimmerman was a self-righteous goofball channeling both Paul Blart and Jack Reacher, acting out of his depth. He put himself in a position he could only get out of by shooting Martin. But since everything he did was close enough to legal, he could not properly be convicted of premeditated murder. Now we must wonder if he's learned anything from his experience.)

Anyway, the whole case got Roof thinking. He did some Internet research and found a great deal of evidence that black people are stupid and violent.

Duh.

Of course they're stupid and violent. They're human beings. We invented stupid and violent.

What is Roof himself, if not stupid and violent?

It's said he almost called off his attack because the black people were so kind to him in that church. Unfortunately, his sketchy research kept him on track.

(He should never have gone into a church. Religious people are supposed to be kinder and nicer than non-religious people and must act accordingly—whether they want to or not.)

Roof makes some interesting points in his manifesto. He says black people are raised to be more racially aware than whites. That would appear to be true.

Black kids (even President Obama's kids) have to experience the "conversation," wherein they are instructed how to behave around white cops—lest they be shot or beaten or arrested for no reason. White kids are not subjected to the conversation.

(Unless you count being warned to be careful around black folks, who—it is alleged—all carry straight razors.)

"Negroes have lower Iqs, lower impulse control, and higher testosterone levels in generals. These three things alone are a recipe for violent behavior." [sic]

I've never done a study of it, but I'm willing to believe the three traits mentioned are more prevalent in the prison population than out. For blacks and whites.

Whether these traits show up more often in the black population than among whites, I have no idea. It's tempting to use this measure to explain the disproportionate number of blacks in American prisons, but there are a lot of other factors likely to weigh in, possibly to dominate the equation.

Roof is probably right when he suggests any attempt at a scientific study of the differences between blacks and whites would likely get the researcher fired. And that's a shame. If differences exist but are kept hidden, they can never be addressed, possibly to the detriment of us all.

Roof champions segregation not only because it keeps white folks away from all those black monsters out there but because it keeps white folks from descending to the sub-human level of the blacks, culturally.

He's also concerned about schools in "bad" (i.e., black) neighborhoods where whites might be forced to attend. Schools designed to deal with lower IQs, lower impulse control, and higher levels of testosterone would presumably have less time left over to teach stuff.

Roof has problems with the school instruction he received, noting that when white folks do bad things (to blacks and others), it's because the perpetrators are white. When whites do good things (like invent civilization), it's never because they're white.

On the other hand, whenever a black man does something noteworthy, the fact he's black is considered a major deal.

When you come down to it, Dylann Roof's main plea is for renewed segregation. He's says it's not too late, that an American population only 30% white could "take it back completely."

What isn't clear is how killing nine black Bible students is a step on that path. Maybe he needed to do some more research.