This past Saturday, a white man walked into a grocery store in Buffalo, New York — with an assault rifle and body armor — and shot 13 people, killing 10 of them.
The man openly espoused the racist myth that white people are being “replaced” by people of color.
And he specifically targeted Black people in a Black neighborhood for his murderous rampage.
Our hearts are broken, and we are grieving for the victims’ families and the people of Buffalo.
Sociologists have definitively shown that mass shootings are social acts. They even consider them “contagious” — with each massacre making another more likely.
In fact, mass shootings in the United States are about six times more likely now than they were in the 1970s. They have been happening even more frequently over the past five years.
It is very difficult to conclude anything other than this:
Racist, hateful, and violence-normalizing speech from leading political and cultural figures has contributed to the rise in mass shootings — especially those where Black people, other people of color, immigrants, Jews, and Muslims are targeted.
- That includes the noxious “replacement theory” that motivated the Buffalo shooter and other recent perpetrators of racist violence.
- As The New York Times reports, this once-fringe myth “has become an engine of racist terror, helping inspire a wave of mass shootings in recent years and fueling the 2017 right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Va., that erupted in violence.”
- The notion that white people are being “replaced” is aggressively promoted by Fox News — in particular on Tucker Carlson Tonight, the most-watched cable “news” program in America.
- The ideas and terminology of “replacement theory” are also being expressed more and more by leading Republican politicians.
This is all frightening and sickening stuff — and we have to be honest about what we’re dealing with.
On the one hand, it taps into deep reservoirs of racism, bigotry, and xenophobia that course through American history.
On the other hand, it is a product of this moment, of Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, and more.
Neither racialized violence nor mass shootings can be “fixed” with a single executive order or legislative act (though we need many of those).
As part of the process to direct our country away from this horror, each of us must consistently reject hateful discourse and demonstrate instead our commitment to equality and decency, love and solidarity.
Add your name if you agree:
Multiracial democracy is an ideal worth fighting for, even if it remains a work in progress. Politicians and talking heads who seek to double down on our nation’s history as a white supremacist patriarchy must be condemned, confronted, and defeated. There is no other way to achieve real, lasting justice and equality.
In peace,
- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen
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