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It's been a month since the siege on the Capitol, which exposed for many Americans the existence of a domestic terror threat. The thing is, there's been a race war raging for much longer than you realize. Hyperbole? Nope.
A thread, and my @AP analysis: https://apnews.com/article/f8f793b94b0dd7e8ec62957dcbeb53d8
A thread, and my @AP analysis: https://apnews.com/article/f8f793b94b0dd7e8ec62957dcbeb53d8
Today’s battles in the race war are waged by legions of white people in the thrall of stereotypes, lies and conspiracy theories that don’t just exist for recluses on some dark corner of the internet. 1/x
(Here, I'll note that this is why there is some -- but clearly not enough -- bipartisan agreement that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's racist, anti-Semitic and hatefully violent speech have no place in a democratic government. But I digress.) 2/x
For a very long time, civil rights leaders, historians and experts on extremism say, many white Americans and elected leaders have failed to acknowledge that this war of white aggression was real, even as the bodies of innocent people piled up. 3/x https://apnews.com/article/f8f793b94b0dd7e8ec62957dcbeb53d8
Racist notions about people of color, immigrants and politicians have been given mainstream media platforms, are represented in statues and symbols to slaveholders and segregationists, and helped demagogues win elections to high office. 4/x
The result? A critical mass of white people fears that multiculturalism, progressive politics and the equitable distribution of power spell their obsolescence, erasure and subjugation. 5/x
And that fear, often exploited by those in power, has proven again and again to be among the most lethal threats to nonwhite Americans, according to racial justice advocates. 6/x
Few people understand this better than @SenatorMGraham, the younger brother of Cynthia Graham-Hurd. Cynthia, a beloved librarian, was among the nine killed in 2015 during a Bible study meeting at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. 7/x
Cynthia Graham-Hurd and her brother were very close. She was college educated, a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Loved being an auntie. Malcolm Graham shared these cherished photos with me. The graduation photo with his daughter, Cortney, taken a month before shooting. 8/x
Former North Carolina state Sen. Malcolm Graham tells @AP that the Charleston massacre should have been a defining moment in our reckoning with white supremacy. And domestic terror inflicted on nonwhite Americans, religious minorities. 9/x
I was in Charleston and covered the entirety of Dylann Roof’s trial, during which a federal prosecutor said the 22-year-old avowed white supremacist intended to start a war between the races. A link to a 2017 feature I wrote off of the trial, here. 10/x https://www.mic.com/articles/164193/dylann-roof-how-to-make-a-racist-radicalization-white-nationalism#.HftuEgBSE
Dylann Roof's murderous rampage sparked a national reckoning over white supremacist iconography, including the Confederate battle flag, monuments and statues that appeared in photographs and drawings investigators found among his belongings. 11/x
You might remember former Republican Gov. Nikki Haley signed legislation permanently lowering the Confederate battle flag that flew over South Carolina’s Capitol. (Later, she seemed to blame Dylann Roof for perverting the flag's heritage symbolism.) 12/x
Historical context: The massacre at Mother Emanuel was the nation’s deadliest act of anti-Black domestic terrorism since the 1963 Ku Klux Klan bombing that killed four girls at a Black church in Alabama. 13/x https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/sep/15
And just one day before the massacre at Mother Emanuel, former President Donald Trump -- Twitter won't let tag him here 
-- launched his White House bid by decrying Mexican migrants as rapists and drug dealers. 14/x
-- launched his White House bid by decrying Mexican migrants as rapists and drug dealers. 14/x
Two years after Charleston, in 2017, white supremacists and neo-Nazis staged the “Unite the Right″ rally in Charlottesville, VA over the proposed removal of a Confederate monument from a public park. Heather Heyer, a white counterprotester, died in an attack by a rallygoer. 15/x
Former President Trump infamously said their were fine people on "both sides" of the Charlottesville violence. And after the Capitol siege, he called the mostly white mob "very special" and professed his love for them. 16/x
I'm connecting these dots so, hopefully, it's easier to see that we didn't just arrive here by accident. A real reckoning around white supremacy means we stop debating whether it is the existential threat to democracy. 17/x
I asked the @RevDrBarber what can we begin to do, across our nation and in our politics, to turn the corner on this issue. He said we must collectively refuse to have policy debates rooted in lies and racist tropes. 18/x
"The collateral damage, when you keep unleashing the lies, sow the wind and pour this poison into the veins of people, is the system becomes so septic that violence spews out of it.” -- @RevDrBarber 19/x https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-us-news-race-and-ethnicity-conspiracy-theories-philanthropy-f8f793b94b0dd7e8ec62957dcbeb53d8
Thanks for your time and for sharing! 20/20
"Analysis: A race war evident long before the Capitol siege" https://apnews.com/article/f8f793b94b0dd7e8ec62957dcbeb53d8
"Analysis: A race war evident long before the Capitol siege" https://apnews.com/article/f8f793b94b0dd7e8ec62957dcbeb53d8
