Confederate Flag, Bedsheets, Crosses, Church Burnings, and Murder Oh My!

Main Stream media could not have scripted a better 2015 remake of Mississippi Burning than what has been going on in South Carolina these past few weeks.

That is until the main player in this recent adaptation (The South) went off script.

The deaths of 9 black Americans inside the holy confines of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston shocked a nation. But unlike cities of Baltimore, Ferguson and Detroit, Charleston offered forgiveness rather than angry protests and looting.

The citizens of Charleston cried and they hurt, but came together to move forward. Even when the president of the United States came to town and a bus load of outside agitators showed up the south only offered her grace.

In the days prior to the president's visit, Nikki Haley appeared in the chambers of the South Carolina Statehouse in one of her signature $2,000 St. Johns business suits and offered up the confederate flag.

Then in a moment of bizarre overreacting Walmart decided to kill the Confederate Flag and anything that contained the image including the Dukes of Hazard Lunch box on aisle 26. 

Then eBay and  Amazon fell in line within hours all to the delight of the yapping news heads on local and national television.

As if on cue, a series of church fires sprang up seemingly overnight, and when social media started unsing the hash tag #WhoIsBurningBlackChurches, main stream media jumped on the band wagon.

Every story about a new church fire included photos of clan members in white hoods looking villainous  towards the cameras. The letters KKK where shown with nearly every sound bite covering the church burnings, then the media really cranked up the rhetoric, Jim Crow, lynching, KKK, race wars and riots.

Trouble is the churches we not falling to torch carrying villains belonging to the hands of hooded Klan members but to mother natural and faulty construction.

Even The Washington Post increased the volume with misinformation:

"Before Tuesday's fire broke out, the NAACP warned black churches to “take necessary precautions” against the threat of attack. And federal law enforcement officials are now automatically investigating all such fires at black churches to see if they are hate crimes."

The truth is ATF and FBI have been automatically investigating all church fire since 1995,

Images of George Wallace and Alabama state police with water cannons and dogs attacking defensless men and women ran side by side with images of gutted out churches or a burned out church van.

Breaking news that yet again another church fire had been reported found, one reporter tweeting that at least 17 church fires had been reported in the last week. In her excitement to spred the word of Black Churches Burning she more than doubled the number of fires. 

In the end the toll would be lowered to seven the last caused by a lightining strike hitting the wooden twenty year old steeple smoldering for a hour or so before winds turned the embers into a full blown inferno.

Before the Greeleyville fire was even out words like Klan, ATF, FBI, Hate Crime, and investigation covered the airwaves with images of the burning church. Not once was the word accident or weather related used.

Despite the clear and certain knowledge that heavy storms with an amazing number of cloud to ground strikes were recorded before the fire. And that arson is normally a wee hours of the morning crime since it is really hard not to be noticed carrying a gas can, and torch while wearing a bedsheets. Main stream media continued to press the hate crime racially motivated KKK connected crime of arson.

Just the facts ma'am:

* June 26: Greater Miracle Apostolic in Tallahassee, Florida. The fire was likely caused by a tree limb falling on power lines.

* June 26: Glover Grovery Baptist in Warrenville, South Carolina. The cause has not been determined, but investigators observed no element of criminal intent.

* June 24: Briar Creek Road Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, which houses both black and Nepalese congregations. Fire investigators ruled that fire an arson, and though they have not seen evidence that hate was a motivation for the crime, they are not ruling it out.

* June 21: College Hill Seventh-day Adventist in Knoxville, Tennessee. Investigators ruled it an arson but they say nothing so far has indicated a hate crime. ATF and other agencies said that it looked like vandalism.

* June 21: God’s Power Church of Christ in Macon, Georgia. Investigators believe the blaze might be arson. ATF is investigating but no ruling has been made. The church had recently been broken into and air conditioners and sound systems stolen.

* June 30: Mt. Zion AME Church in Greeleyville, South Carolina. Investigators have not given a formal report but found no evidence of accelerant common in arson cases. Given the facts known a lightening strike is the probable cause.

The fact is church fires are a rather common event in this country, but only slightly more than 10 percent are arson and less than 1 percent are determined to be hate crimes. 

The media and in fact the president himself have widened the divide between white and black with rhetoric reminiscent of 1960's. The Obama Presidency has become a divisive rather than a uniting force in our nation. Every speech Obama has given since Trayvon Martin has been from the perspective of a Black American president rather than an American president.  

Main stream media, with their wild speculation, presumptive guilt and generous use of KKK images from the past, is also fanning the flames of racial hate and the canyon of racial divide.

It is time to go off script and stay off script and it begins with accepting that the Confederate Flag and that Dukes of Hazzard lunch box is not the cause of racism and removal is not the cure.