Racial hatred in America has faded. Only a tiny fringe of white bigots still feel hostility based on skin color. But those few can inflict cruel harm - as witnessed by the Wednesday evening massacre of nine worshippers at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
A young white man named Dylann Roof went to a Bible study session at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, called "Mother Emanuel." He pretended to join the worship for about an hour - then drew a pistol and began killing people around him. Among the dead was the church's pastor, who is a state senator.
When police caught him, the shooter reportedly said his goal was to kill blacks. His jacket in a Facebook post bore two flags associated with white supremacy: those of past white regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa. Friends said he was known for taking drugs and telling racist jokes. We won't be surprised if investigators find that Roof is entwined with hate groups that thrive on the Internet.
Year after year, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports murders, bombings, arsons, beatings and other attacks committed by far-right racist groups - everything from the Ku Klux Klan to armed "patriot" militias to white supremacy "skinheads" to neo-Nazi "churches" to government-defying "sovereign citizens." It's a small but sordid part of America.
(The center's founder, Morris Dees, came to Charleston in 1995 to deliver a W.E. "Ned" Chilton III Leadership Lecture outlining his group's successful lawsuits against the dangerous fringes.)
Just this week, a New York Times analysis said: "The main terrorist threat in the United States is not from violent Muslim extremists, but from right-wing extremists."
Two sociology professors - one a terrorism expert - interviewed police departments across the nation and reported:
"Since 9/11, an average of nine American Muslims per year have been involved in an average of six terrorism-related plots against targets in the United States. Most were disrupted, but the 20 plots that were carried out accounted for 50 fatalities over the past 13 and a half years. In contrast, right-wing extremists averaged 337 attacks per year in the decade after 9/11, causing a total of 254 fatalities."
In other words, home-grown hate groups are at least five times more deadly than the few young U.S. Muslims who become radicalized and plan massacres.
The professors quoted a Justice Department report saying:
"Since 2000, 25 law enforcement officers have been killed by right-wing extremists who share a 'fear that government will confiscate firearms' and a 'belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.'"
The Times article listed several neo-Nazi murders, such as this one: "In Nevada, anti-government militants reportedly walked up to and shot two police officers in a restaurant, then placed a 'Don't Tread on Me' flag on their bodies."
Such half-crazed fanatics are a small fraction in America, but it takes only a few to commit dreadful harm - as the South Carolina tragedy showed.