This is a reminder that it has been two weeks since an act of white supremacist terror killed 10 people at the Tops Market in Buffalo, New York.
The terrorist targeted this specific supermarket because it was in a predominately Black area of the city. He was inspired and motivated by a belief that Blacks and other people of color were trying to purge whites.
Like most of us, I am horrified, but also I am enraged by the Buffalo massacre.
This isn’t my typical anger. It is more visceral, radiating from the very depths of my soul. It isn’t because the victims are Black or that the killer is a white supremacist. It is because our nation has a deadly race problem, which we refuse to seriously address. I’m as angry now as I was two weeks ago.
The problem of race, racism, and white supremacy isn’t new to our nation.
A brief perusal of the historical record offers ample evidence. Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote in the 1857 Dred Scott decision that the Blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect…”
D.W. Griffin’s 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation, opened to rave reviews and received a special showing at the White House despite its depiction of Black men as subhuman and cravenness.
In the aftermath of the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, “White Citizens Councils” were established throughout the south by white folks who used violence and intimidation to deny basic human rights to Blacks.
Today, the 2022 version of the White Citizens Council advances the “Great Replacement Theory” that inspired the Buffalo shooter. This narrative posits there is a global conspiracy to replace whites with non-whites with the goal of eradicating white people. Sadly, this theory has found its way into mainstream American politics.
A May 2022 Associated Press-NORC poll found that one-third of Americans believe “a group of people in this country are trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants who agree with their political view.”
In a video uncovered by KUSA, Colorado’s own Lauren Boebert says, “Guess there is definitely a replacement theory that’s going on right now … We are killing American jobs and bringing in illegal aliens from all over the world to replace them if Americans will not comply.”
I’m angry because we, as a nation, saw the warning signs and did nothing about it. Instead, we have rewarded those who are either outright white supremacists or white supremacists adjacent by electing them to public office; watching their television shows; reading their books; and listening to their podcasts.
I’m angry because we dismissed the white supremacist rhetoric of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.
I’m angry that our collective refusal to be honest about the impact of America’s original sin on this nation has allowed white supremacist ideology to infiltrate every fiber of our nation. Our moral failure on this issue is evidenced by the hate-fueled massacres at Mother Emmanuel Church in 2015, Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, El Paso in 2019, and now Buffalo.
There will be those who accuse me of hyperbole, but I will let the facts speak for themselves.
In its 2020 hate crimes statistics, the FBI reported the highest number of hate crimes in 12 years. More than 60% of hate crime victims were targeted because of their race or ethnicity. According to the FBI, Black folks remained the most target group. Last March, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray described the threat posed by white supremacists as “a persistent, evolving threat…Itap the biggest chunk of our racially motivated violent extremism cases for sure. And racially motivated violent extremism is the biggest chunk of our domestic terrorism portfolio…”
In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in the Souls of Black Folks, “The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land…the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people…”
These 119-year-old words, more eloquently than I ever could, encapsulate my anger and pain. The root of my anger is the unrealized promise of this nation. An unrealized promise made more glaring with the deaths of those ten beautiful souls by a killer in service to a racist manifesto.
In their faces, I see my mother, my aunts, my uncles, cousins, and fellow church members. In the actions of the shooter, I see an unrealized promise that feels even more unattainable and hopeless in a world where some see my very being as a threat to their existence.
Terrance Carroll is a former speaker of the Colorado House. The first and only African American to ever hold that position in Colorado. He is a Baptist preacher, attorney, and police officer. He is on Twitter @speakercarroll.
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