By Edward Dunbar

The Charleston shooting at the Emanuel AME church is another tragic case of violence targeting black Americans. According to law enforcement officials, the shooter said he was aiming for nothing less than “starting a race war.”

As a psychologist, I’ve been studying hate violence for the past 20 years. In addition, as a clinician I have treated and evaluated hate crime offenders – of both violent and nonviolent crimes – for the past 20 years.

While the Charleston shooting strikes most of us as unusually horrifying, many of the themes of this tragedy are symptomatic of the nature of hate violence in our country.

https://theconversation.com/hate-violence-and-the-tragedy-of-the-charleston-shootings-43579