Charleston’s sympathy shouldn’t be surprise

Two weeks ago, a white supremacist walked into a church in my hometown of Charleston, S.C. and murdered nine black men and women. Millions watched the city come together in ways that touched the country.

In this historic city with a deep and troubling history of racial oppression — the cradle of Southern secession — many from outside the state and the South seemed surprised to see the love that poured out of Charleston.

They shouldn’t have been.

Like any state, South Carolina certainly has its problems, racial and otherwise. Like any city, Charleston has much room for improvement. But South Carolina and Charleston have also shown significant progress.

When video emerged in April showing a white North Charleston police officer shooting an unarmed black man, Walter Scott, it didn’t take long for that city’s white mayor to announce that the officer would be arrested and charged with murder. There was no pushback against this decision from the police department or anyone else. No politicians spoke out in favor of the officer or defended his actions.

As North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey put it, “When you’re wrong, you’re wrong.”

Six months prior to the Scott shooting, a white state trooper shot an unarmed black man, Levar Jones, in Columbia, S.C. South Carolina Department of Public Safety Director Leroy Smith called the video “disturbing.” Thankfully Jones survived, but the officer was fired and charged with assault and battery.

Compare these South Carolina police brutality cases to Eric Garner’s in New York City, where video showed a white police officer choking out an unarmed black man on a sidewalk for the petty crime of selling “loose” cigarettes. Garner pleaded with the officers, “I can’t breathe” until he eventually died. In the Garner case, there were no indictments. Prominent New York politicians sided with the police and even blamed Garner for his own death.

Compare the Walter Scott murder to Freddie Gray’s case in Baltimore, where another unarmed black man died under questionable circumstances at the hands of police. The city’s prosecutor called Gray’s death a homicide, officers were arrested and charged with manslaughter and murder, though the police department is standing by the officers and calling for the prosecutor’s resignation.

There were no riots after Walter Scott’s murder, similar to Ferguson and Baltimore. There were no riots after the Charleston church massacre two weeks ago, as some might have expected.

“Lots of folks expected us to do something strange and break out in a riot,” said Reverend Norvel Goff during a service at the Emanuel AME Church four days after the murder. “Well, they just don’t know us,” he added.

I went back home to Charleston a week after the Dylann Roof murders. I went down to the Emanuel AME Church, as did thousands of others, to mourn the victims.

It was about 100 degrees that day, which is not unusual for Charleston in June.

The compassion I saw on the street, though amplified, was not unusual either. The coming together of that city, black and white, on the street, in the churches, at the vigils, showed the city at its best.

Peggy Noonan observed, “I just have to say what a people the people of Charleston are. They are doing something right, something beautiful, to be who they’ve been the past few days.”

“From the beginning they handled the tragedy with such heart and love. They handled it like a community, a real, alive one that people live within connected to each other.”

Let us not pretend that division and strife, particularly racial, still does not plague Charleston as it does most American cities. The reignited debate over the Confederate flag is but one reflection of that tension.

Some misguided, and even racist, South Carolinians do indeed continue to see themselves and their state through the parameters of 1861-1865. But too many who don’t understand our state or city make that mistake too.

We are better than this today.

The best of Charleston, of South Carolina, of America — of humanity — was the amazing love shown by the victims’ families who, with pure Christian hearts, forgave the man who had murdered their family members in cold blood.

Noonan wrote, “What a country that makes such people. Do you ever despair about America? If they are America we are going to be just fine.”