Perhaps now we can stop looking for some way to explain how a young white man murdering nine people in a black church — after telling his victims he was there to kill black people and “you have to go” — was not really about race:

Dylann Roof has confessed to authorities to shooting and killing nine people this week at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, two law enforcement officials said Friday.

One of the officials said that Roof, who is white, told investigators that he wanted to start a race war.

The not-about-race explanations started before Roof was identified on Thursday as the suspect and later arrested. Fox News speculated that it was an assault on Christians. Rick Santorum also suggested that the shooting was an assault on religious liberty. Lindsey Graham said that while he “can’t explain” why someone would commit such a heinous act, he did add “there are people out there looking for Christians to kill them.” And Alveda King, conservative “pro-life” activist and niece of Martin Luther King, said sure, sure, maybe race had something to do with it, but the real reason this tragedy occurred is abortion.

Meanwhile, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who’s pretty sure the state officially ended racism when she was elected and sees no problem with the state continuing to fly the Confederate flag, said Thursday in a statement on Facebook that “we do know that we’ll never understand what motivates anyone to enter one of our places of worship and take the life of another.” That was before Roof (also, by the way, a fan of the Confederate flag) was identified as the suspect and before he confessed to the murder and before he said his motivation to enter that church was to kill black people to start a race war.