The Wednesday morning murders of 24-year-old Roanoke TV reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, were a racist atrocity, a hate crime. Were they not white, they would be alive today.
Their killer, Vester L. Flanagan II, said as much in his farewell screed. He ordered his murder weapon, he said, two days after the slaughter of nine congregants at the African-American AME church in Charleston, South Carolina.
“What sent me over the top was the church shooting,” said Flanagan.
To be sure, racism does not fully explain why Flanagan, fired from that same WDBJ7 station, committed this act of pure evil.
Black and homosexual, he said he was the target of anti-gay slurs from black males and racial insults from white colleagues. He had gotten himself fired from other jobs in broadcasting. He carried a grab bag of grudges and resentments.
Yet, in the last analysis, The Washington Post headline got it right: “Gunman’s letter frames attack as racial revenge.”
Other news organizations downplayed the racial aspect. But had those murdered journalists been young and black, and their killer a 40-something “angry white male,” the racial motivation would have been front and center in their stories. ...
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