Buffalo massacre should be a wake-up call for Black America to fight a common enemy
The Buffalo massacre should be a wake-up call for Black America.
If we heed this moment as such, the reverberations will reshape the nation from Upstate New York, where a prison guard is learning the limits of tolerance on social media after sharing a meme mocking the killings, to the Southwest, where Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is showing that power and control mean more to him than compassion and equality.
It’s not often that racism makes itself so clear, giving us a reminder that rich or poor, old or young, privileged or disadvantaged, we’re all in this fight together.
The threat in Buffalo was clear
Typically, we see fissures that prevent Black progress as we argue amongst ourselves over whether microaggressions constitute real racism or whether to pool efforts and resources into ultra-liberal demands to defund the police or how heavily to prioritize the fight to teach schoolchildren an accurate history of U.S. racial atrocities and their aftereffects.
It’s equal parts ridiculous and rational.
Infighting can doom any movement; but since there are nearly 42 million Black people in America, there are nearly 42 million ways to be Black in America, it’s silly to think there would be uniformity of thought on any given issue.
The Buffalo attack, however, is a reminder of the thread that unites us all as African Americans: If we were there in that grocery store that day, we would have been targets.
The shooter wasn’t skipping past Black Republicans or Black Democrats. He wasn’t targeting people along generational lines. And he wasn’t looking at resumes to determine which Black people he deemed acceptable.
A retired police officer was killed along with a church deacon. A 32-year-old was killed along with an 86-year-old. A cancer survivor died along with a community activist.
Sharing an ugly meme has consequences
The racist was killing Black people, creating a moment and an enemy so extreme that it could create a sense of Black unity that our nation hasn’t seen since the civil rights era.
It could be that we’re seeing the earliest signs.
A corrections officer in New York shared a crude meme attempting to disguise itself as gallows humor. It was a picture of the grocery store with a caption calling for “cleanup” in several aisles.
“Too soon?” he wrote. “This should weed out some (Facebook) friends.” He posted a laughing emoji after.
He was immediately suspended without pay, and the state’s Department of Corrections is taking steps to fire him. His union has issued a statement, saying it would fight for due process even though it “does not support the actions that brought you to this point,” the Washington Post reported.
This is a positive step. Just imagine how many Black inmates this man would have interacted with over his 25-year career and how he might have mistreated them based on his calloused whims.
Ducey missed a key chance to direct his party
In Arizona, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey has disappointed friends of tolerance and equality by refusing to stand boldly on the side of right.
A Republican state senator from Flagstaff, Wendy Rogers, used Twitter to blame the attack on the federal government. She’s known to embrace conspiracy theories, including Trumped up lies about the 2020 presidential election.
Dig deeper: Ducey again avoids condemning Rogers after Buffalo comments
Ducey had a chance to set the direction of his party, but didn’t. The Arizona Republic asked him about Rogers’ comment, to which he replied:
“What happened in Buffalo was shocking and heartbreaking. People have lost their lives. Family members have lost loved ones. I think we ought to mourn the people that have died at this time, and I don’t think that hateful or incendiary rhetoric is helpful.”
It was more important for Ducey to show everyone that he was the boss, instead of standing with the victims by forcefully rejecting those who would deny the source of their pain.
“I’ve condemned racism in all its forms,” Ducey said. “I’ve done it dozens of times.”
Once more shouldn’t hurt then, should it?
Racism is often easy to disregard
Again, it’s rare that it’s this clear where people stand.
“Racism in all its forms” typically leaves so much room for debate that any opportunities for progress are lost.
Take promotion and hiring, for example. There’s always a way to hide bias in those decisions.
Does a candidate have a degree? If so, which school is it from? Was the candidate an honors student? What about experience? Did the candidate rack up a resume full of unpaid internships? What companies are they from? What about credit scores? Or physical presentation? Does a candidate have long hair? Dreadlocks, braids or twists? How about an accent?
Any or all of those factors could or could not be tied to race.
Racism also is easy to disregard when it comes to police misconduct.
That unarmed Black man who got shot, did he have a record? The guy who got pulled over, did he have his license, registration and proof of insurance?
And it’s easy to dismiss racism in housing, public education, health care, criminal justice enforcement rates, unemployment rates and myriad other facets of life in America.
But in this case, the enemy is clear
What happened in Buffalo, however, can’t be ignored, disregarded or dismissed. Neither can the response to it.
It stands to galvanize Black activism beyond surface-level differences.
Of course, we’ve seen this sort of thing before with the Charleston church shooting in 2015.
The question is whether Black leaders and their white allies will have the courage to stand up to an enemy that couldn’t possibly have made itself more clear.
Racism.
The enemy is racism.
Let’s see whether Black America hears the wake-up call.
Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @SayingMoore.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Buffalo shooting should be a wake-up call for Black America
