America Isn't Ready to Truly Understand the Buffalo Shooting

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/buffalo-shooting-white-supremacy-racial-violence/629908/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/54pux

One evening about seven years ago in St. Andrews, Scotland, I was walking home from a long day of doctoral research. Most people out that night were not concluding studies. A scattered few exited the ancient city’s meager collection of pubs and restaurants.

That ordinary night shifted when a drunken man stumbled out of one of those bars and spotted my Black body. He presented no manifesto. I have no access to the soul-distorting experiences that led him to look upon me with contempt, but seconds after he saw me, he blurted out that most famous of anti-Black racial slurs. I had never been verbally accosted in a British accent and didn’t know that word was international.

I performed the assessment that Black folks have performed for centuries. How much danger am I in? Then I remembered I was in Scotland, and therefore the person probably did not have a gun. So I gave him my best cold stare, ready to defend myself if needed. He apparently performed a similar assessment, thought better of it, and moved on. There was nothing particularly special about that day. I had done nothing to antagonize him. I had simply been Black on what may have been a Tuesday, and for that reason alone I was a target of someone else’s rage.

The 10 Black people in murdered in Buffalo, New York, lived in a country with a different set of laws than those of the United Kingdom: When the white supremacist Payton Gendron drove 200 miles from his home to a grocery store in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, he was well armed. They died in a Tops grocery store because they were Black and wanted to buy food on a Saturday in America.

*snip*

[uponit7771]

1. K&R, Terrorist shooting PoC is cheaper, quicker and better chance of living than lynchings

[RANDYWILDMAN]

2. Tell me you didn't know the shooter was a white male in camo ???????

the second you heard about this/

The repressed and disgruntled white male creating domestic terror is not new. let me guess this shooter was also a huge fan of TFG

[Chainfire]

3. Don't think that Tuesday is special, the haters hate eight days a week.

Native Americans, Jews, Blacks, liberals, Muslims, Mexicans, it is all the same to them. Blacks are just so easy to spot that a Scottish alcoholic can do it...

[elleng]

4. By Esau McCaulley

[gratuitous]

5. Better that you be shot and killed doing the grocery shopping

Than one person anywhere in the United States be deprived of the firearm of his choice. This is the bargain we've struck.

[durablend]

6. Hey now

Any one of those people killed in the supermarket could've gone any robbed and/or killed someone at some point in the future. Shouldn't we all feel safer without that threat hanging over our heads?

[Kid Berwyn]

7. What Doc Rivers said:

“We keep loving this country and this country doesn't love us back.”

Doc Rivers commenting on social justice and the shooting of Jacob Blake. Ignoring the orders of a Kenosha, Wisconsin police officer, an agitated Blake tried to enter his car. Rather than taking away keys or fighting hand-to-hand, the policeman chose to shoot Blake seven times in the back at close range, crippling him for life. Wisconsin authorities cleared the cop of wrongdoing. From what Doc Rivers, me and any fair-minded person saw, the cop got away with attempted murder.

[Solly Mack]

8. K&R

The reason Gendron must remain alone is because isolated incidents cannot be stopped, only endured. Isolated incidents can be denounced by all, right and left, without any need to change.

But if his actions are linked to American history and current culture, then we must ask about the roles people play in creating or maintaining a culture of anti-Black racism. One person pulled the trigger that ended those lives, and he bears the ultimate responsibility. But culture makes certain ideas and implications thinkable and actionable.

To assert that Payton Gendron’s actions were connected to a past and present, then, is not merely an intellectual accent to an idea; it is a revolution with far-reaching political and social implications that many are not willing to endure. Only if we can see these connections do we have a chance of healing.

[Girard442]

9. They want this country to be ungovernable by anyone but a fascist dictator.

To make this happen, people will have to die, whether from COVID after being deceived into refusing vaccination, by women receiving inferior healthcare during pregnancy-related situations, or by being gunned down in mass shootings.

Acceptable casualties, as far as they're concerned.