What is it about?
On the evening of 17 June 2015, Dylann Roof summarily executed nine people in the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in the hope of instigating a Race war. Roof also partook in a multi-month road trip visiting heritage and memorial sites in two States, over hundreds of miles, and with multiple visits. Presented as a photo essay, the aim here places Roof’s activities into the tourism literature, and by doing so, proffer an indicting ideological critique on both that literature, tourism as a concept in society.
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Photo by Dylan Mullins on Unsplash
Why is it important?
How do we go about studying White Supremacy? Do we study the effects of White Supremacy on those it terrorizes, or do we study the actual deployment of the terror that White Supremacy calls forth? An understanding of how the State deputizes everyday citizens through sanctioned violence may be foreclosed when our conceptions of violence lean heavily towards the perceptions and experiences of those violated.
Perspectives
In (re)directing a gaze to actors of violence, may lead us towards a more troubling but important direction in understanding Black travel and travel oriented towards understanding the Black experience. From this photo essay, it can be gleaned that immersive experiences in African and Black history does not do the work we may think it does (i.e., cultural awareness, historical appreciation, embrace of a “just” truth). Roof immersed himself in the sites and history of Black atrocity and instead, the experience only deepened his already strident position “to kill all Black people”.
Professor Rasul Mowatt
North Carolina State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Dylann Roof road trip, July 2021, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003164616-9.
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