Dylann Roof (Courtesy Photo)

By George E. Curry
NNPA Editor-in-Chief

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – We may never know what ignited the explosion inside of White Supremacist Dylann Roof that prompted him to kill nine African Americans attending Bible study at a Black church in Charleston, S.C., but his hatred of Blacks apparently deepened two years ago after a White female he was interested in began dating an African American, according to a relative.

In an interview with the Intercept, a site originally created to provide a platform for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, a cousin of Roof, who identified himself as Scott Roof, was quoted: “Dylann was normal until he started listening to that white power music stuff.” He said his cousin “kind of went over the edge when a girl he liked started dating a black guy two years back.”

Scott Roof continued, “Dylann liked her. The black guy got her. He changed. I don’t know if he would be here if not…”

At that point, the cousin “abruptly hung up the phone,” according to the site.

In a 2,500-word online manifesto that was discovered after Dylann Scott was arrested, he ranted about Blacks purportedly being inferior to Whites and argued that “Niggers are stupid and violent.”

Trending

COMMENTARY: Aikido is More than Martial Arts: It’s Community

Yet, he claimed, “I was not raised in a racist home or environment. Living in the South, almost every White person has a small amount of racial awareness, simply because of the numbers of negroes in this part of the country. But it is a superficial awareness.”

Public opinion polls show that over the past few decades, Americans of all races have grown more accepting of interracial dating and marriage.

According to the Pew Research Center, “an overwhelming majority of Millennials, regardless of race, say they would be fine with a family member’s marriage to someone of a different racial or ethnic group. Asked about particular groups to which they do not belong, Millennials are about equally accepting of marriage to someone in any of the groups tested: Roughly nine-in-ten say they would be fine with a family member’s marriage to an African American (88%), a Hispanic American (91%), an Asian American (93%) or a white American (92%).”

However, there are some Whites who are not nearly as accepting of people who do not look like them.

On May 23, 2014, Elliot Rodger, 22 years old, went on a rampage, killing six people and injuring 14 others near the University of California at Santa Barbara.

In his last YouTube video, he said: “Tomorrow is the day of retribution, the day in which I will have my revenge against humanity, against all of you. For the last eight years of my life, ever since I hit puberty, I’ve been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires all because girls have never been attracted to me. Girls gave their affection, and sex and love to other men but never to me. I’m 22 years old and I’m still a virgin. I’ve never even kissed a girl. I’ve been through college for two and a half years, more than that actually, and I’m still a virgin. It has been very torturous.”

After a high-speed police chase that resulted in his car crashing, Rodger died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head.

The son of a British father and Asian mother, he wrote in a 107,000-word manifesto, “How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves. I deserve it more.”

Displaying a similar superior attitude, Roof wrote: “Modern history classes instill a subconscious White superiority complex in Whites and an inferiority complex in blacks. This White superiority complex that comes from learning of how we dominated other peoples is also part of the problem I have just mentioned. But of course I don’t deny that we are in fact superior.”

###

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post