Slate’s Jamelle Bouie: Charleston Massacre Part of Long ‘Tradition’ of Anti-Black Violence

BLITZER: “All right. Let me bring Jamelle into this conversation. You tweeted earlier, Jamelle, the definition of terrorism in America is white supremacist attacks on blacks, the only way to understand this shooting. Tell us what you meant by that.” 
BOUIE: “So if you look immediately after the civil war, reconstruction, based in the beginning in 1866 up to 1877, you see the emergence of groups like the Ku Klux Klan, of a whole host of neo confederate or a confederate nostalgic groups aiming to restore the status quo through violence against African-Americans. And this continues throughout the 19th century. And through kind of the early 20th century as well. And the unifying fact of all these groups, which by any definition were terrorist groups, is that they saw black autonomy as a threat and used violence as an attempt to limit it. And I think when you are looking at the history of American terrorism, in large part that is a -- that is that history of extremist violence against African- Americans. And so what's so tragic about this incident in Charleston is it lies in this long and sort of ignoble tradition of that kind of violence.” 
BLITZER: “You have no doubt this was an act of terror?” 
BOUIE: “I have no doubt whatsoever. Not only -- I'll put it this way. Columbia, South Carolina, has a whole lot of black people. This kid lived in Columbia. If he just wanted to kill black people, he could easily have found somewhere in Columbia to do it. If he just wanted to kill black people in Charleston, the area is rife with African- American churches. He went to a particular church with historic significance in a city with historic significance, to kill a leader of the community there. And so to me that is clearly a politically motivated attack.”