Racist domestic terror strikes again...

The Monday Musings!

Mass shooting in Buffalo

Another weekend, another young white male armed with a high powered weapon who chose to commit murder in a Buffalo, New York grocery store—the 198th mass shooting of 2022!

I won't invoke this evil killer’s name on this website, but I will invoke the names of those innocent people whose lives were snatched away:

Ruth Whitfield, 86

Pearl Young, 77

Katherine Massey, 72

Heyward Patterson, 67

Celestine Chaney, 65

Geraldine Chapman Talley, 62

Aaron Salter Jr, 55

Andre Mackniel, 53

Marcus D. Morrison, 52

Roberta Drury, 32

Lest we forget...

*** As a veteran journalist who has been published in the NY Times, Florida Times-Union, Tampa Tribune, and scores of times in the Tallahassee Democrat (among others), and as a historian who has studied the impact of racism in America through two degrees, I consider myself an expert on the fact that across America (but particularly in the South), that the media have often been key components in propagating white supremacy.

Whether it was Southern newspapers sowing the seeds of secession over the issue of slavery, or the same stoking the flames of lynch mob violence and calling for defiance of integration edicts during the Jim Crow era, local newspaper editorial boards have been complicit in explicit biases that have plagued Black people for centuries. 

But I would be remiss if I didn't note that in the modern era, while newspapers are no longer calling for the lynchings of Black men, women, and children, that the ways that modern day killings of Black people by police or vigilante violence are reported often stand in stark contrast to the ways that acts of violence perpetrated by Blacks (or other minorities) are reported! 

Such disparate reporting is due to what’s called "implicit bias," which is defined by Merriam-Webster's Dictionary as: "A bias or prejudice that is present but not consciously held or recognized."

Now, it is my sincere belief that each of us has some level of implicit bias, with perhaps the most humorous example of my own being the title of the 90's era hit basketball themed movie starring Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes, White Men Can't Jump. If you polled most Black men my age who were living when that movie debuted, we all pretty much grew up assuming that most white boys and men couldn't play basketball as well as we could—a bias, mind you, that was not based in any scientific fact! The first time I learned this lesson was in 10th grade when I went to watch my schoolmates at FAMU High School play Lincoln High School in basketball and a Lincoln player named Todd Schmid, a 6'2 white guy, drove the lane and laid down the most vicious dunk that I had seen in person to that point in my life 😆. 

But sadly, implict bias is usually no laughing matter, especially when the biases come from the white “Christian” Americans who make legal, political, and yes, reporting decisions that detrimentally impact racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. Those implicit biases can include (but are not limited to) beliefs that Blacks are intellectually or morally inferior; or, dangerous and predisposed to crimes; or, that Blacks are not prone to pain and don't need pain management medications at the same rate as whites. 

Now, whites who hold such implicit biases don't see their perspectives or themselves as racists due to the fact that they are not out there wearing Klan robes or chanting at alt-right rallies about "White Replacement Theory," one which holds that minorities are planning to get vengeance against whites once they become the dominant culture.

Photo of a very frustrated Hobbs answering an antagonistic (and asinine) question from a reporter following a hazing hearing circa 2007.

But the injury can still be the same if, say, you are an implicitly biased judge that sentences Black frat members who paddle a pledgee to prison because you deem their acts barbaric, but sentence white frat members that force pledgees to drink to the point of hospitalization or death to probation because, while tragic, "(white) boys will be boys."

The same holds true for that news editor or reporter that starts playing the "mental illness" and "he comes from a great home" card when a white male is charged with mass murder, but when it's a Black or Muslim charged with mass murder, whole paragraphs are devoted to that one time they chewed gum during class in first grade—or skipped a class in 8th grade—with hardly a mention of mental illness, even when such is made an issue in court filings. Such is not always so, but it happens enough to warrant my opprobrium.

Thus, my call for all fellow members of the Fourth Estate to ask yourselves, before writing or publishing, "is this article really fair and balanced?"If not, make it so…

*** The Buffalo mass murder is a native New Yorker and, in planning his evil deeds, may have even thought that if taken alive, that he could avoid the death penalty since New York has effectively abolished capital punishment.

But alas, a date with death very well could await this evil killer if he is indicted for murder/civil rights violations in Federal Court—a charge that is punishable by the death penalty!

Stay tuned...

***My stomach nearly turned when I saw the murderer pointing his weapon at a defenseless white man before saying "I'm sorry" and proceeding to shoot more Black people! Such removes all doubt that race was first and foremost on the killer's mind, even thought two white lives, tragically, were taken, as well...

***Conservatives just LOVE to dismiss talk of sensible gun control by deflecting to their belief that if "more good guys with guns carried openly,” that mass murderers, like the one in New York, would be taken down in a hot zone situation. 

Well, the fallacy in this premise sadly was on full display last weekend as Aaron Salter (below), a former Buffalo police officer who served as a store security guard, exchanged fire with the evil killer who wore thick body armor that fully protected him from death.

Lest we forget Aaron Salter...

***Keeping with the implicit bias theme, consider the irony that Black men, women, and kids get beaten, Tasered, and shot dead by the police while UNARMED—but heavily armed killers of a certain hue get taken into custody—alive...

***I am angry, as I typically feel anger anytime a mass murder event takes place in America. But I am weary, too, because all of the righteous anger on Earth does little to push the need for sensible gun and ammunition control in our nation through Congress or the White House.

I mean, when gun control didn’t happen after 20 kids were slaughtered by an evil killer at Sandy Hook Elementary, or, when gun control didn’t happen after nine people were killed by an evil killer during prayer meeting at Emmanuel AME, who are we kidding to think that gun control will ever happen in America?

Feel free to leave your thoughts below (or drop me an e-mail) if you are just as tired of domestic terrorism across our land…