Buffalo, New York, was the site of yet another brutal attack by a white supremacist. While the victims’ families grieve, some politicians only offer up prayers but refuse to regulate the sales of guns nor are they willing to condemn those who push White Supremacy theories.
These so-called white supremacists heavily arm themselves and attack innocent people in churches, synagogues, and shopping centers. Even a deer in the woods has a better chance of surviving this kind of inhumane attack.
If these white individuals were truly supreme, they would come to those locations and engage those people with no weapons and in hand-to-hand combat or perhaps allow the targets to arm themselves so that it might be a fair fight. Instead, these cowards plan to kill as many unarmed and innocent individuals as they can. There is no supremacy in their actions – it is instead just the opposite. They are cowards who, without their high-powered weapons, are nothing but the weakest and worst amongst us.
Today, there is a racist theory that is promoted on a television network and by the right-wing fanatics that there is a plan amongst people of color to replace white people with people of color, including Jewish people. It is this so-called Replacement Theory that engages the right-wing of America to also demonize immigrants and worry about more brown babies being born. At the same time, part of this racist movement is to be an anti-birth control and anti-abortion. And they claim to be pro-life. No, they are not pro-life but are instead a pro-birth movement. The pro-birth movement does not care about what happens to a child once he or she is born. Some would call them today a forced-birth movement.
These right-wing people who fear the browning of America are passing legislative bills to diminish any voting power that rightfully belongs to these growing communities of color. I would say if they are worried about the growing numbers of people of color, they would want to promote birth control, provide abortion, and then have more children of their own.
What would the politicians say and do if men of color targeted gatherings of predominately white people and took powerful guns and began killing them? If this were to happen there would be such a strong reaction by right-wing America that it would make our collective heads spin. And just to be clear, I pray that this would never happen.
At the same time, when it comes to locking up people of color in prisons and at times even executing them, ultra-right-wing Americans promote an “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” policy. Does this vengeance ideology thus give the families of those killed and injured in Buffalo the right to enact harm on the family of the shooter and the media hosts and politicians that blinded this troubled man to commit such a heinous act?
We must be ever so careful in our responses to violence and hatred, that we do not become the enemy we despise. But before we turn the other cheek, we must express our pain and loss at a high-volume level so that all will hear, and in hope that they will understand that prayers are not enough. Especially when those offering only prayers are the same advocates of the hate and fear that continues to instigate violence.
We must ensure that every day we teach love for all, not just for those who look like us or agree with our politics of the moment.
