Buffalo might be New York’s second-biggest city and metropolitan area, but people may not be as familiar with my hometown as they are with New York City. But it always seems like just enough people know who we are: Maybe it’s because Buffalo has one of the nation’s most devoted sports fanbases in the “Bills Mafia,” or because you just love William McKinley, Shirley Chisolm, or Tim Russert trivia. But recently, after a White nationalist turned a beautiful Saturday afternoon into a tragedy as he opened fire on a Tops Supermarket in a Black neighborhood, you’ve likely heard of us because we joined a list far too many communities have found their place on.
“Unprecedented” is a word we have heard a lot these past couple of years. After a tragedy, it is calming for many to rationalize some of the pain by painting the event as unforeseeable, and thus, unpreventable. That comfort cannot be found in Buffalo. This attack was not unprecedented, nor was it the work of a lone wolf. It was supported by those who enabled his weapons purchase, those who spread his ideology, those who failed to notice the signs of radicalization earlier, and those who failed to report as they watched it unfold live.
While this attack in Buffalo was streamed via Twitch, this isn’t the first time in recent memory when such an attack was livestreamed, a fact that the Islamic community of Christchurch, New Zealand remembers all too well. And yet, platforms still haven’t been able to control the spread of such footage.
This wasn’t even the first White supremacist to attack on an innocuous Saturday, as members of the Tree of Life synagogue, including Holocaust survivors, experienced in 2018, in an attack that 11 worshippers died from. And, yet, governments haven’t emphasized curtailing online radicalization of White supremacists as they have with radical Islamic terror groups with researchers finding 24 related attacks in 2020 alone
This isn’t the first attack on minorities at a supermarket, as another terrorist made sure of in his brutal and surgically specific attack on “Mexicans” at an El Paso Walmart located in a predominantly Hispanic community, which killed 22, eight of whom were Mexican citizens. And, yet, even the largest personalities who radicalized this shooter continue to radicalize others with their language.
If you’d like to get more specific, this isn’t even the first attack on a predominantly Black supermarket, with a 2018 attack in Jeffersontown, Kentucky, killing two Black people at a Kroger store. The attacker made his motives clear to an armed White bystander: “Don’t shoot me. I won’t shoot you. Whites don’t shoot Whites.” And, yet, many continue to cite a “good guy with a gun” as the best defense against these attacks.
The Kroger shooting of Jefferson, Kentucky, originally targeted a Black church instead of a supermarket. Though that initial plan did not come to fruition, you’d be forgiven if you nonetheless remembered a church attack occurring. Just a couple years prior, a different assailant slaughtered congregants at the oldest church of the oldest Black denomination in the United States: Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina. And yet, online networks of racist belief, even if not openly violent, continue drawing people toward violence.
This list of attacks isn’t all-inclusive: it’s only high-profile attacks in the past few years. The Washington Post found at least 15 attacks or plots against Black churches alone between 2015 and 2020. It says nothing of more devastating historical attacks on the Black community — such as the Tulsa Race Massacre, of which some survivors are still alive and remain uncompensated. It says little of attacks against individuals such as Emmett Till, for whom justice still hasn’t been served. And whether you choose to call it violence or not, it says nothing of the incalculable and uncompensated harm done by institutions — corporate, government, or nonprofit — including Harvard itself, be it through actions like financing slavery or by the silence of its massive voice on issues of civil rights.
It isn’t universal, however, for America to react with such docility to terror threats. In fact, we have historically reacted hotly when we feel our nation is at threat. For example, after the 9/11 attacks, innocent Muslim Americans faced long-lasting broad and unwarranted backlash simply because of racistly-perceived associations. Meanwhile, politicians and media personalities that are actually responsible for fueling White supremacist attacks — such as Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Rep. Elise Stefanik, and former President Donald Trump — will face less impactful backlash.
To be Black in America is to be extraordinarily exposed to a special kind of terrorism. The only kind of terrorism treated as a normal matter of course in America. The only kind of harm that we’re advised to “get over.” Attacks that produce few task forces or surveillance programs against suspects. Little global revulsion or surprise. No extra law enforcement was deployed to protect our community. This attack will be treated as commonplace, predictable, and precedented because unfortunately, it is.
Do not let anyone tell you this attack was a mistake, impulsive, or arose solely from mental illness: The level of planning shows this was deliberate and calculated. This attack was as surgically planned as a bank heist from any movie. The shooter targeted the main source of quality food in an urban food desert, a store the community fought for more than a decade to build.
The racism of these young White men can no longer be dismissed as an Internet phenomenon, a joke, or a phase: It’s criminal behavior, a near unchallenged radicalization pathway for domestic terrorism, and a threat to national security. Teens have been entered into gang databases, arrested, and policed far more for far less harm, with entry usually biased by race.
If 9/11 was not described as a “mistake,” then neither should our nation’s White terrorism problem. The FBI; Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Explosives; Department of Homeland Security; and other agencies must get serious about combating this threat to national security — just as they would a foreign one. They must use their intelligence and that of other law enforcement agencies, including local ones, to proactively prevent attacks that are often announced online beforehand or come from those with a history of violent threats. For instance, authorities had already investigated the Buffalo shooter for threatening his high school graduation, although they chose to file no charges. Had law enforcement officers flagged this history, perhaps they could have stopped a tragedy before it happened.
Unless and until law enforcement takes proactive action, communities of color all over the U.S. will continue to be victims of attacks, large and small, reported and unreported, injurious and fatal, overt and covert. As communities across the U.S. appear to reject “defund the police” rhetoric in favor of greater monetary resources, some of these added funds should be directed toward concrete measures that will combat these severe and pervasive threats to national security.
To the federal, state, and local law enforcement who are supposed to keep us safe at home: When these terrorists tell you who they are, believe them the first time. Nothing about these attacks is inevitable when law enforcement seeks them out. Find them. Stop them. Save lives. It’s your job, not a game of chance.
Unless and until law enforcement takes proactive action, communities of color all over the U.S. will continue to be victims of attacks, large and small, reported and unreported, injurious and fatal, overt and covert. As communities across the U.S. appear to reject “defund the police” rhetoric in favor of greater monetary resources, some of these added funds should be directed toward concrete measures that will combat these severe and pervasive threats to national security.
Image by Campbell Jensen is licensed under the Unsplash License.
