Howie Comen 3:11am Jun 19 MURDER IN CHARLESTON. NO ONE IS BORN RACIST Couldn't sleep. Started typing. Thanks to all of you that put up with my rants and raves over the years.. I hope someone shows this to my daughter Sarah and grandson Harrison when they are old enough to understand what I tried to do. For 30 years I have waged a sort of guerrilla war against hatred in the name if interfaith harmony in South Carolina from the trenches of the Charleston Congress of Religions in the 1980's and 90's and Interfaith Partners of South Carolina in the new millennium. Battles for Equal Justice, Equal Education, and Equal Economic Opportunity have largely fallen on deaf ears. Governor Haley, largely at the bequest of Interfaith Partners of SC, has declared Interfaith Harmony Month for the past three or four years. These efforts have been totally ignored by the press. I thought I was waging this war alongside God, clergy and academia throughout the state and beyond. Today I am not sure. As I walked down King Street yesterday at noon towards the Morris Brown AME Church at noon I passed the area teeming with police and press. As I walked past TV Cars,tractor trailers, and hordes of TV people with cameras and laptops I became sick. It took nine murders of black worshipers at a bible study to attract the press. All the national press of every form of media were consumed with the story reminding me of the basics of journalism " If it bleeds it leads." As I sat in Morris Brown from Noon to 2 PM and watched local, state, and national clergy make speeches crafted for photo ops I realized that I wasted my 30 years waging this war. No one gets it or will get it. As we all held hands and swayed to and fro to the tune of "We Shall Overcome" I realized that by Saturday and Sunday the colorful crowd swaying will return to their lily white or pitch black places of worship separate by equal under everyone's eyes but God's. Hatred isn't the work of a single deranged person. It is the work of centuries of inequity reinforced by family, society, and government. Hatred is reinforced by a racial achievement gap in Education of 15 to 23 %. Hatred is reinforced by government, law enforcement, and a judicial system that favors whites and disadvantages blacks. Business reinforces hatred by running the black middle class into oblivion in the 50's and 60's when white merchants opened their doors to black dollars and black wallets abandoned black businesses while white wallets remained closed to black businesses. A scene from a 1949 Broadway play has always haunted me. I think it represents the situation in Charleston SC, the State of South Carolina, and the nation. One isn't born racist. . You've got to be taught To hate and fear, You've got to be taught From year to year, It's got to be drummed In your dear little ear You've got to be carefully taught. You've got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made, And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade, You've got to be carefully taught. You've got to be taught before it's too late, Before you are six or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate, You've got to be carefully taught! A Sorrowful Howie Comen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAZ8yOFFbAc YOU HAVE GOT TO TAUGHT TO HATE