A mass shooting at an Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina, left nine people dead on Wednesday. Sadly, it's a kind of tragedy that Milwaukee’s Amardeep Kaleka knows too well: He's the son of the president of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin who was killed along with five others by a white supremacist in Oak Creek in 2012.
"Right now, my thoughts are with the nine families and the community of Charleston," said Kaleka.
Officials arrested suspect, Dylann Roof, after a 14-hour manhunt, in what they are calling a "racially motivated" attack. It’s being reported that Roof spoke during the shooting saying, "I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go."
Kaleka, a documentary filmmaker who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2014, said the comments were "horrifically ignorant" in light of what black people have endured throughout the "existence of America." He said the shooting is nothing short of extreme domestic terrorism that's linked to white supremacy.
Kaleka, an Indian-American who was raised in Milwaukee’s inner city, said he has a unique perspective on race thanks to having lived in both African-American and white cultures. He said he believes the two cultures are growing apart; hastened in part by the racial tensions witnessed through a series of highly visible police shootings along with the related protests and riots of the past year.
"It’s one of these gaps that we as a community — all of us; white, black, purple, blue — have to come together and say we are Americans first, humans before that … and now it’s time for us to start acting as we are one people," he said.
The Rev. Darryl Williams, of the St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church, agreed. He said although the country has made some advances in the area of civil rights, racism is still very much embedded and entrenched in American society.
"The fact that someone would go into a sacred place like a church, lets us know how embedded it is. Racism and hatred has no boundaries," said Williams.