The arrested man is the 21-year-old son of a sheriff's deputy in St. Landry Parish, where all of the burned-down churches were located. The churches were torched between March 26 and April 4 and all are churches with historically African-American congregations.
In Louisiana, if you were going to burn down a random church, there's a fairly decent chance it could turn out to be a black-congregation church. If you were going to burn down three random churches however, the chances of all of them being black churches seem quite a bit lower. The town of Opelousas, where two of the churches were burned, is a little less than three-quarters black; however the village of Port Barre, where the other arson occurred, is exactly the opposite, around 70% white; and yet a black church was burned there. This suggests at least a decent possibility that that the churches were targeted for racial reasons.
However, since the arrest was just made, police are still looking into the motive and nothing concrete suggesting racism has been made public yet in the initial hours of the investigation. Police have reported that the suspect claims to be a fan of "black metal", which has a possible connection insofar as being a genre of music whose themes often include the desecration or destruction of churches; but again, this is just a possible connection that's being explored.
In Louisiana, if you were going to burn down a random church, there's a fairly decent chance it could turn out to be a black-congregation church. If you were going to burn down three random churches however, the chances of all of them being black churches seem quite a bit lower. The town of Opelousas, where two of the churches were burned, is a little less than three-quarters black; however the village of Port Barre, where the other arson occurred, is exactly the opposite, around 70% white; and yet a black church was burned there. This suggests at least a decent possibility that that the churches were targeted for racial reasons.
However, since the arrest was just made, police are still looking into the motive and nothing concrete suggesting racism has been made public yet in the initial hours of the investigation. Police have reported that the suspect claims to be a fan of "black metal", which has a possible connection insofar as being a genre of music whose themes often include the desecration or destruction of churches; but again, this is just a possible connection that's being explored.
via International Skeptics Forum http://bit.ly/2KqhupB
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