Racing on
Jamelle Bouie explains in Slate that millennials grew up thinking about race and not about racism and how a ghetto is not a cause but an effect. He writes: “Which gets to the irony of this survey: A generation that hates racism but chooses colorblindness is a generation that, through its neglect, comes to perpetuate it.”
Social side
Dylann Roof, the suspect in the Emanuel AME killings, did not try to hide his white supremacist thinking. One friend said he felt guilty for not trying to stop Roof. Another said that though Roof was a racist, “I don’t judge people.” Via the New York Times.
Black friends
The accused killer is a high school dropout whose life quietly veered off path. And yet in trying to piece together his life, the Washington Post finds that half of Dylann Roof’s Facebook friends were African-Americans.
Take it down
Ta-Nihisi Coates says it’s time to take down the Confederate flag in South Carolina. Actually, well past time. Via the Atlantic.
Terrorism terms
Is the Charleston killing terrorism? And why does the word seem to matter to so many people? Via Vox.
Presidential force
Hillary Clinton joins Obama in saying it’s time to do something about gun violence. “How many people do we need to see cut down before we act?” she asks at a meeting of Latino politicians in Las Vegas. Via Time.
It’s time
In a speech not about guns, Rand Paul says it might be time for Republicans to look beyond the 2nd Amendment. Via the National Journal.
Danger zone
Pope Francis’ encyclical: A vision that spares no one. Elizabeth Kolbert writes in the New Yorker that it offers up the vision of “a world spiraling toward disaster, in which people are too busy shopping and checking their cell phones to do, or even care, much about it.”
Bad science
The rebuttal: The pope gets the science wrong, he should stick to his day job or doesn’t he know that doing anything about climate change will only hurt the poor. Via the New Republic.
Photo credit: Dominic Dominic Jacques-Bernard, Creative Commons, Flickr.
