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Podcasts Take Two
Charleston shooting: How race influences the way we label suspects
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Jun 19, 2015
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Charleston shooting: How race influences the way we label suspects
The acts committed at the Emanual African Methodist Episcopal Church are being investigated as a hate crime, but how do we label the person allegedly behind those acts?
People pay their respects outside Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 18, 2015.  Police captured the white suspect in a gun massacre at one of the oldest black churches in the United States, the latest deadly assault to feed simmering racial tensions. Police detained 21-year-old Dylann Roof, shown wearing the flags of defunct white supremacist regimes in pictures taken from social media, after nine churchgoers were shot dead during bible study   on June 17, 2015. AFP PHOTO / MLADEN ANTONOV        (Photo credit should read MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/Getty Images)
People pay their respects outside Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 18, 2015.
(
MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/Getty Images
)

The acts committed at the Emanual African Methodist Episcopal Church are being investigated as a hate crime, but how do we label the person allegedly behind those acts?

The acts committed at the Emanual African Methodist Episcopal Church are being investigated as a hate crime, but how do we label the person allegedly behind those acts?  

Is he a terrorist? Will he be deemed mentally ill? And will what he be called be influenced by his race? Those are some of the questions raised in a recent column in the Washington Post. It was written by 

, an Associate Professor of Religion and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She joins Alex Cohen for a discussion on the topic.