While Republicans are running away from the Confederate flag that they spent decades defending and embracing, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is speaking the truth about racial terrorism.
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Former Sec. of State Clinton said:
That night, word of the killings struck like a blow to the soul. How do we make sense of such an evil act, an act of racist terrorism perpetrated in a house of God? How do we turn grief, anger, and despair into purpose and action?
Those of us who are Christians are challenged by Jesus Christ to forgive seventy times seven — a daunting, even impossible task for most of us.
But then we have seen that scriptural admonition in action.
Isn’t it amazing, remarkable even, when fear, doubt, desire for revenge might have been expected, but instead forgiveness is found? Although a fundamental part of our doctrine, its practice is the most difficult thing we are ever called to do.
But, that’s what we saw on Friday, when one by one, grieving parents, siblings and other family members looked at that young man who had taken so much from them and said: “I forgive you.”
Wanda Simmons, the granddaughter of Reverend Daniel Simmons, said, “Although my grandfather and the other victims died at the hands of hate, this is proof, everyone’s plea for your soul,” she said to the killer, “is proof that they lived in love so hate won’t win.”
Their act of mercy was as stunning as his act of cruelty.
Hate cannot win. “There is no future without forgiveness,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu taught us, and forgiveness is the first step toward victory in any journey.
I know it’s tempting to dismiss a tragedy like this as an isolated incident, to believe that in today’s America, bigotry is largely behind us, that institutionalized racism no longer exists.
But despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s long struggle with race is far from finished.
We can’t hide from hard truths about race and justice. We have to name them and own them and change them.
Hillary Clinton’s strong statements since the Charleston shooting demonstrated true leadership, especially when compared to the wishy-washy back peddling flip-flops of the Republican presidential candidates. In a matter of days, Republicans went from claiming that the Confederate flag was a “states’ rights” issue to crumbling under a tidal wave of public pressure and calling for the flag to be taken down.
Clinton’s bigger point was that it isn’t enough for Republicans to take the flag down. The country must also do something about the racism and raced based terrorism that continues to take innocent lives.
It would be foolish to claim that racism can be defeated through physical action, just as it was absurd for Republicans to claim that Muslim terrorism can be defeated with military intervention. An idea can only be defeated by stronger hearts and minds that are willing to fight.
While Republicans are fumbling, Democrats are leading. The moral center of this country has moved left, and the real leaders are those who don’t have to test the political winds, but take a stand because it is the right thing to do.
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