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Expert panel on the Buffalo shooter and what he stands for: “He was not a lone gunman.” By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Buffalo killer didn’t act alone, panel agrees: He was nurtured by the Fox-GOP “doom loop of racist discourse”
Payton Gendron’s apparent goal was to kill as many Black people as possible in order to intimidate, terrorize and dehumanize not just the Black community in Buffalo but Black America more generally. His attack can also be understood as an assault on the very idea of multiracial democracy, and a brutal rejection of the premise that nonwhites should have the same rights and freedoms in the United States as white people. I asked a range of experts to offer their insights about Saturday’s terror attack in Buffalo and what that event reveals about American society in this moment of democracy crisis, rising neofascism and other troubles. Their comments have been edited for clarity and length. Read more
Related: Buffalo: This is where Donald Trump’s race-war fantasies lead. By Chauncey Devega / Salon
Buffalo
A neo-Nazi idea to spark a race war inspired the Buffalo killings. By Zack Beauchamp / Vox
The Buffalo shooting has roots in “accelerationism,” a neo-Nazi idea linked to a wave of recent hate killings
The weekend’s mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, was not merely a random act of hate. It was the product of a violent strategy, formulated in obscure neo-Nazi magazines and disseminated on the internet’s darkest corners, that aims to bring about the destruction of American society. This idea is called “accelerationism,” and violent white supremacists like the Buffalo shooter see it as their best chance to stop the so-called “Great Replacement”: the notion that the West’s white population is being “replaced” with nonwhites, a deliberate demographic shift often blamed on Jewish cabals. Accelerationists believe that race and ethnicity create inherent divisions within Western societies, which individual acts of violence can inflame. The idea is to “accelerate” the crackup of Western governments — and bring on a race war that culminates in white victory. Read more
Related: The Right Weaponizes America Against Itself. By Bret Stephens / NYT
Related: The Long Game of White-Power Activists Isn’t Just About Violence. By Kathleen Belew / NYT
Lawrence O’Donnell Accuses Rupert Murdoch Of Shaping Thinking Of White Supremacist Killers. By Lee Moran / HuffPost
“No one should waste their breath on the men in makeup at Fox when Rupert Murdoch is responsible for everything that they say and do,” said the MSNBC anchor.
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday tore into billionaire press baron Rupert Murdoch, blaming the Fox News founder for the white supremacist foundation that inspired the racist massacre in Buffalo, New York, that killed 10 people. Fox News’ prime time star, Tucker Carlson, has repeatedly talked about the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory the white suspected Buffalo killer cited to justify the mass shooting in a supermarket in a mostly-Black part of Buffalo. Read more
Buffalo community honors Tops shooting victims and calls for change. By Jaclyn Diaz / NPR
The community in Buffalo, N.Y., continues to grieve and heal after Saturday’s mass shooting by coming together. On Tuesday, in an empty lot just across the street from the Jefferson Avenue Tops supermarket — the site of the mass shooting — crowds of people came together to honor the 10 deceased victims. That piece of the tragedy adds another layer of fear and grief to the community, according to Kelly Diane Galloway. “So imagine the incredible fear that Black people have to constantly live in knowing that we could be killed at any moment — while shopping, while laying in our beds, while sitting in a car with your family — because you’re Black,” she said. Read more
Related: Black people want the hate to stop. But it is only getting worse. By Brian Broome / Wash Post
Political / Social
US Senate candidates Beasley and Booker make history with primary election wins. By Gerren Keith Gaynor / The Grio
Cheri Beasley of North Carolina and Charles Booker of Kentucky became the first African American nominees for their respective states.
Cheri Beasley beat out a crowded Democratic primary in North Carolina to become the party’s nominee for U.S. Senate. If successful in November’s general election, the former chief justice for the North Carolina Supreme Court would become the first Black senator from the Tar Heel State. In Kentucky, U.S. Senate candidate Charles Booker clinched the win with more than 70 percent of the vote. Both he and Beasley made history on Tuesday as the first African Americans to be nominated by the Democratic Party for a U.S. Senate seat in their respective states. Read more
GOP alarms sound on Herschel Walker in Georgia.
The next seven days could be the most consequential stretch of primary season.
Even before that race plays out, Republican concerns are extending to next Tuesday’s primary in Georgia. Trump’s backing of Herschel Walker for Senate leaves him in a commanding position in a campaign where he has avoided debates with GOP rivals entirely — while largely refusing to discuss allegations of domestic violence, physical threats against women and stalking. Read more
A rural county in Iowa that supported Trump turns to Latinos to grow. By Maria Sacchetti / Wash Post
“Pro-life” states are ready to ban abortion. It will mean more children living in poverty. By Dylan Scott / Vox
How “pro-life” states are failing new parents and babies.
Almost half the United States is ready to outlaw abortion, if given a green light by the Supreme Court, something it’s expected to do in the next few months. But many of those states are not willing to give new babies and their families the educational, medical, or financial support they need to lead a healthy life. That could leave tens of thousands of future children unnecessarily disadvantaged and living in poverty. Read more
U.S. Baby Formula Shortage May Hurt Black Families More. By Margo Snipe / Capital B
Nearly 85% of American families start off breastfeeding their newborns. For Black families, it’s about 73%.
As worried parents across the country scramble to secure formula for their babies amid a nationwide shortage, Black parents, who are less likely to breastfeed, might be bearing the weight of the panic disproportionately. In recent weeks, stores across the country have been scrambling to keep up with demand for baby formula, pushing some retailers to limit sales as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the White House struggle to address the worst powder formula shortage in decades. Read more
Targeting the Uneven Burden of Kidney Disease on Black Americans. By Gina Kolata / NYT
New treatments aim for a gene variant causing the illness in people of sub-Saharan African descent. Some experts worry that focus will neglect other factors.
Kidney specialists have long known that Black Americans are disproportionately affected by kidney disease. While Black people make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population, they comprise 35 percent of Americans with kidney failure. Black patients tend to contract kidney disease at younger ages, and damage to their organs often progresses faster. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
How Black people and Jews are bound together in ‘great replacement’ theory. By Yonat Shimron / RN
Dozens of pages of the Buffalo shooter’s manifesto are devoted first to Blacks and then to Jews, replete with photos, drawings, graphs and caricatures.
At the root of this xenophobic plan, known as replacement theory, are Jews to whom the alleged shooter devotes as much vitriol. Traditionally, Jews are depicted as stealth invaders who manipulate Western elites to disempower and replace white Americans. Both Blacks and Jews are bound together in white supremacy, watchers of the movement say. Read more
Related: Buffalo’s poet laureate Jillian Hanesworth presses for change. Raquel Maria Dillon / NPR
White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America a book by Anthea Butler. By Bookshop
Butler reveals how evangelical racism, propelled by the benefits of whiteness, has since the nation’s founding played a provocative role in severely fracturing the electorate. During the buildup to the Civil War, white evangelicals used scripture to defend slavery and nurture the Confederacy. During Reconstruction, they used it to deny the vote to newly emancipated blacks. In the twentieth century, they sided with segregationists in avidly opposing movements for racial equality and civil rights. Read more
Historical / Cultural
The Ugly Backlash to Brown v. Board of Ed That No One Talks About. By Leslie T. Fenwick / Politico
The 1954 landmark Supreme Court ruling was hailed as a victory for desegregation. But protracted white resistance decimated the pipeline of Black principals and teachers.
Today, most Americans think about the segregation-shattering 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision in one of three ways. We may think about Linda Brown, the plaintiff in Brown, a little girl forced to walk miles to a segregated Black school instead of attending the white school down the block. We may remember the famed Norman Rockwell painting featuring 6-year-old Ruby Bridges escorted by U.S. Marshals past a wall splattered with tomatoes and a racial slur. Or we may recall the tumult of busing in the South — Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia… and even much further north of the Mason-Dixon Line in South Boston, too. But there is plenty that we have not been taught about Brown, which turns 68 today, or how it continues to impact us. Read more
The America That Killed George Floyd. By Imbolo Mbue / The Atlantic
In a new biography of the man whose murder sparked massive protests, two reporters tell a longer story of institutional racism.
Days after George Floyd was killed, I attended a Zoom memorial of sorts, organized by Africans for Africans, so we could mourn his death together and think of how we, as a community, could better treat our American brethren. The ludicrousness of this was not lost on me—that it would take so long, take a tragedy of this public magnitude, for us to see what America had been doing to our brothers and sisters; that it would take a graphic video for both immigrants and citizens of America to comprehend what they’d wrought in fostering an environment in which African Americans are so often treated like animals. Read more
Cosby accuser’s suit alleging he groped her as a teen will go forward. Maria Puente / USA Today
Nearly 50 years after an alleged encounter at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, Judy Huth’s civil lawsuit against Bill Cosby – accusing him of groping her when she was a teen – is going forward to trial next week, a judge ruled Tuesday according to lawyers in the case. Jury selection will begin Monday at the Santa Monica courthouse for the trial of Huth vs Cosby, with the trial starting as soon as a jury is picked. Cosby, 84, was not in court. Read more
Dispatches from the Race War a book by Tim Wise. By Bookshop
In this collection of essays, renowned social-justice advocate Tim Wise confronts racism in contemporary America. Seen through the lens of major flashpoints during the Obama and Trump years, Dispatches from the RaceWar faces the consequences of white supremacy in all its forms. This includes a discussion of the bigoted undertones of the Tea Party’s backlash, the killing of Trayvon Martin, current day anti-immigrant hysteria, the rise of openly avowed white nationalism, the violent policing of African Americans, and more. Read more
Sports
The 50 Highest-Paid Athletes Made Nearly $3 Billion; Here’s A Breakdown Of The Numbers. By Brett Knight / Forbes
‘The Long Game’ documentary goes inside Makur Maker’s brief tenure at Howard. By Jerry Bembry / Andscape
The five-episode series on Apple TV+ doesn’t shy away from the tension of the basketball prospect’s only season with the Bison
At the time Makur Maker announced his decision nearly two years ago to play his college basketball at Howard University, his stock was soaring. He was blue-chip, one-and-done and can’t-miss all wrapped in a 6-foot-11 frame, and the expectations were that Maker would dominate his league and elevate the profile of historically Black college and university (HBCU) basketball on the way to becoming a lottery pick in the 2021 NBA draft. That didn’t happen. Maker wasn’t a lottery pick in 2021 (he withdrew his name a week before the draft), and is currently a long shot to be selected in next month’s draft. Read more
What it could take to bring Brittney Griner home from Russia. By
As I recall, because this was happening so close to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it felt like Russia maybe was trying to get a little leverage on the United States, potentially, by detaining this star athlete for having hashish oil on her. People who follow Russia immediately thought of the fact that there is a well-established history of Russian law enforcement planting drugs on people in order to arrest them. This is what they do. And even though the war hadn’t started, the invasion hadn’t started yet on February 17, they knew it was coming. So for those inclined to think this was a setup, the pieces were there. There’s Russia’s history of doing that. Read more
Stephen Curry Graduates From Davidson College And Gets His Diploma At Age 34. By Ron Dicker / HuffPost
The Golden State Warriors star fulfilled a promise he made when he left college in 2009.
The Golden State Warriors superstar received his bachelor’s degree in absentia from Davidson College on Sunday, writing in an Instagram photo/video gallery that it was a “Dream Come True!!”. “Class of 2010….aka 2022 but we got it done! Thanks to my whole village that helped me get across the finish line. Made the promise when I left and had to see it through. Official @davidsoncollege alum ?? Momma we made it! #greatdaytobeawildcat.” Read more
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