It is my hope that the senseless murder of the nine Christians in Charleston, South Carolina, as well as reaction to it, will cause people to stop and think about what we, a nation of diverse human beings, are doing to each other. What has infected our society to the point that there is such hate by all people for his/her fellow man?

I believe that in addition to the fact that we have a racist leadership in Washington D.C., which promotes racial hostility at every possible opportunity, it is in large part due to an irresponsible news media that likewise never misses an opportunity to continue to stir the pot of hatred. The news media have adopted a style of antagonistic reporting. Rather than to just report a story, they have chosen to take sides with the firebrands who are instigating the hateful rhetoric and making them out to be the good guys, whoever they may be. It’s a national sickness.

It should have been self-evident to anyone with the ability to think clearly that the murders in the Charleston church were rooted in Dyllan Roof’s racial hatred. But where does or did that hatred come from? Dyllan Roof is only a twenty-one year old kid who was taught by the environment he has grown up in. Think about that for a minute. He was apparently only a fifteen-year-old boy when Obama and his racist cohorts came in to power. And if you believe the racial divide in this country hasn’t grown exponentially since Obama became president, you’re only kidding yourself.

When I was a young boy growing into a man back in the ‘50s and early '60s, there truly was a race problem in America. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it became readily apparent when I left home and went into the Air Force. I hadn’t experienced a black versus white racial problem back home in Montana, but I saw it first hand when I got to Texas. One of the most vivid memories I have of that time was when I was at what was then-Amarillo AFB, just outside of Amarillo, Texas. One of my closest friends was a black man from Youngstown, Ohio. I choose not to openly identify him in this commentary, but his initials were WTM. One day we went into Amarillo together. We went into a restaurant to have lunch and they would not serve WTM because of his race. This was in late 1962 or early 1963. It was the first time I had ever witnessed racial discrimination firsthand. WTM walked out of the restaurant without saying anything and I walked out right behind him. It turned out that it was the first time WTM had ever experienced such racial hatred himself. It always bothered me that a man was discriminated against because of his race even though he was wearing a uniform of the Armed Forces of the United States. He was serving his country, but his country was not serving him.

I provide that example as a means of showing how truly bad racial relations were at the time. I saw much more of it as time went on and it became even more evident when I saw it within the ranks. But I also saw the problem go away during my Air Force career. Thanks to people like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and an awakening by white America, I saw the sharp edge on the knife of racial hatred in America being filed away. By the time I retired from the Air Force in 1983, I had witnessed a tremendous change in our country as far as race relations were concerned. There were still racial problems, but not to the degree that it had been in 1962. Black people were working shoulder to shoulder with white people with only a few sporadic incidents occurring in certain sections of the country. I saw black people becoming an integral part of society because all Americans had grown tired of the racial strife. The black man and woman had the same opportunity to achieve the American dream as any one of any other race.

Now, some thirty years later, we are almost as bad off as we were in the '60s, and the racial division has intensified since Obama became president. He admittedly does not like white people as is evident in his writings as well as his actions, and he has surrounded himself with people who are also just as racist as he is. It is nonsensical to believe that only white people are racists. There is plenty of evidence that many blacks are every bit as racist as any white man ever has been. I believe it is becoming even more so with each day that passes and I believe it is happening because our children are being raised and taught to have a racist attitude.

I’m sure it’s just a matter of coincidence, but on the day before the Charleston murders occurred, there was a video going around on the Internet in which an eight-year-old black boy was recorded saying, “I hate m— f— white people.” He is being, and has been, taught to hate white people. No eight-year-old kid comes up with that sort of a statement on his/her own. I would venture to say his parents are teaching him to hate white people, just as they are being taught by the Obama administration. Likewise, Dyllan Roof has been taught to hate black people, even though many of his friends on Facebook are black.

Dyllan Roof admittedly said he killed those black Christians because he wanted to start a race war. Even before that admission was made public, a black lady was caught on camera calling for the exact same thing. One race is just as bad as the other. If Obama was the leader he should be, he would be addressing this issue. Instead, he chooses to politicize the murders and overlook the hatred that exists even within the people of his own race. When is it ever going to end?

Mr. President, you had better start taking a close look at what you have done and are continuing to do in your effort to fundamentally change America. You and your ilk are personally responsible for destroying it.