As he tugged open the plywood door to his newsstand Saturday morning, Charles Tone turned to one of his customers with a question.
"How can they forgive him?" said Tone, 66. "Man, I don't even know if it can be genuine."
The newsstand at the corner of Manchester and Vermont — the heart of a historically black neighborhood in South Los Angeles — often hums with conversation about politics and sports.
Nationwide on Saturday, people were talking about the massacre of nine black churchgoers, allegedly by a white man, in Charleston, S.C. But among African Americans the subject felt more urgently personal, stirring fear, anger and unease as well as debate about what it means to be black in America.