Reflections on Accountability and the Buffalo Shooting

Written by: Becca Williams, SBT Copywriter

It has been a little over a week since the Buffalo shooting and already news coverage around the violence has slipped to the bottom of our newsfeeds.  I know that by now this shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of us, but it’s a reminder of a few things:  our attention spans have become so diminished that an act of racial hatred and domestic terrorism only slightly registers on our collective conscience, there are so many other awful things happening that are worthy of coverage and there’s only so much capacity, and, ultimately, that this significant loss of Black life and this significant reminder of how deeply racism and White Supremacy are embedded in our institutions and daily lives are both unimportant. 

That our attention spans have been continually cut short is an intentional maneuver of White Supremacy and one that apathy only strengthens.  This current is strong and the easiest choice is to let it take us where it’s headed.   What this does is create a news cycle that has society sort of rock hopping in a straight line. We can even use that same “current” metaphor and say that those rocks are in this river of White Supremacy and each terrible thing – every mass shooting, every civil right being whittled away from reproductive rights to voting rights to food sovereignty, every new indicator that our very own Earth is raging against us, every new act of “unprecedentedness” is another stone under our feet where we pause for a minute before moving on. 

The problem with this is that each time one of these incidents returns we view it as simply another stone in the lineup – at most we take the time to look back over our shoulder to see the patterns emerging: Charleston, New Zealand, El Paso, and now Buffalo.  What we are neglecting to do is pause and assess why it is that we’re on these rocks to begin with, to wonder what it is about the river’s current that keeps us from getting down and building boats with the capacity to move upstream.  So long as we view each act of racial violence as the problem itself and react to it with a short lived and renewed sense of horror, the less likely we are to see it as a symptom of the actual problem, one we’ve been living and swimming in for centuries. 

Of course it's easier to express a sense of astonishment – and here I’m speaking to other White-identified folx whose lives are not at risk in this sense and for whom these acts are often surprising – than it is to take stock of how we continue to arrive at this place and then to challenge the circumstances we are actively contributing to that impede change and peace and liberation from taking hold.  Yes, I am talking about accountability.  Personal, interpersonal, familial, organizational, political and social accountability. 

(The lives lost in the Buffalo shooting)

While I was reading and watching articles, video clips, and the news about the shooting, I caught myself doing the thing that I imagine most of us (White folx) have done – being horrified and angry at how this virulent and blatant white supremacist ideology has seeped so deeply into some people’s bloodstreams that it can, along with access to weapons built for mass murder, lax gun laws, and a flawed mental health and education system, create a monster.  I was initially curious about the conservative response to the shooting and spent some time watching Tucker Carlson clips and reading the New York Post and Breitbart and hoping my devices wouldn’t think these searches were a trend.  After audibly gasping when I read that Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers referred to the shooting as a false flag operation carried out by the “feds”, I spent some time on her Twitter page.  I then looked up “Ultra-MAGA” and saw that when these people’s opinions are read for what they are and not regurgitated through my mostly left leaning media consumption, they become all-encompassing.  That they are what so many Americans believe, not just a few red flags signaling the end of our democracy.  I then spent some time flailing, wondering how it was that we became this divergent, that I could feel so far away from people who think differently than I do.  I felt helpless and gutted, as though I were watching my childhood bedroom burn down:  a place that I have known for so long all of a sudden up in flames.

The situation felt immediately beyond my control and shut me down, pushing me to seek relief by floating on my back and letting the current take me away.  I did exactly what White Supremacy would have me do: see the bigness of the situation and latch on to something else.  The “situation” here being the immense, direct, and ever-present threat to Black life that exists within our country and within ourselves.  I like to think that after some time spent learning about anti-Blackness, Whiteness, and White womanhood and the ways in which I uphold White Supremacy that I wouldn’t have fallen so easily into the trap but I realized it’s not linear growth.  Each website I visited and every drop of “what can possibly be done about this” took me further and further away from the humanity of those lost Black lives. It removed me from seeing the advocacy and the organizing being done in Black and brown communities to create and sustain change, change that can take root if we collectively stopped wringing our hands and started listening.

I want to acknowledge that traditional liberal media doesn’t do many favors, either.  The “thoughts and prayers” approach, the “this senseless act”, the “let’s pass legislation to end hate crimes and gun violence”, the “let’s bolster our red flag laws”, the “Gendron will never again see the light of day” – these all amount to exactly not addressing the systemic racism and institutionalized hatred that continue to bring us here.  Calling this “senseless” detracts from the very real experiences of many communities for whom racialized violence and terror are a part of daily existence.  In terms of legislation – if we could have, we would have.  That violence to this extreme “renews” calls for anti-hate crime and gun control legislation says a lot about what the government is actually capable of when it comes to making social change. Sentencing Gendron to a lengthy prison sentence places him in a system that was built to protect people who look exactly like him and gives him the opportunity to learn a lot more about how White Supremacist ideology works.

So much of this boils down to accountability, and accountability here doesn’t just belong to the far-right.  If we are to only pay attention to how this was talked about in the White and mainstream news or on social media we’d see a storm of finger pointing about who and what needs to change so that this doesn’t happen again.  Humanity is lost when this devastation and death devolves into White folx in power talking around and around and around it until it inevitably reoccurs.  Amidst all of this it can be hard to find a toehold or any glimmer of hope that anything can change and that’s exactly the corner White Supremacy wants to paint us into. 

(Mourners outside of the Tops grocery store)

For any of this to change, Whiteness needs to hold itself accountable.  This means personal and interpersonal accountability and looking to where in our sphere we can make these changes and practicing it over and over again. This can seem like an alien concept if we haven’t practiced holding ourselves accountable before, and many of us haven’t.  This doesn’t just apply to anti-Blackness – I’m talking about holding ourselves accountable to harm within our families, with our colleagues, etc. Practicing that and practicing accountability for our anti-Blackness can happen at the same time. The latter is not the same as talking about these issues with groups of friends who look and think like us, nor is it the same as acknowledging the limits of whatever bubble we live in or texting condolences to our Black friends in a way that centers us as the “good White person.”

Accountability looks and feels challenging, a manifestation of the internal and external effort it takes to paddle against that rapid current of White Supremacy.  It is difficult precisely because it is supposed to be.  Now, I know we personally did not participate in Gendron’s activities that day nor in any of his preparation.  But we do contribute to the ways in which our society enables and tolerates this level of hatred.  Think about the ways in which you have done this: the handwringing, the talking around the humanity, the donating then sitting back, unquestioningly.  We are taking steps, yes, and we must continue interrogating and divesting from these systems. 

There is absolutely a spectrum with this extreme level of behavior on one end, and the daily instances of racism that we all perpetuate on the other.  If at this point you are still unaware of what I’m talking about or somehow believe that your actions, inactions, and socialization do not fit on this spectrum then I encourage you to go back and read Wanda’s emails from the beginning.  Whiteness viciously tightens its grip on power and control when it gets the slightest inkling that this power is shapeshifting (this is what replacement theory is about).  This doesn’t just happen in violent White Supremacist ideology, but in our everyday.  I encourage you to think about where this shows up in your life.  When have you felt that you’ve been owed something that you haven’t received and how did you respond?  This could be many things, including the seemingly mundane: a job you interviewed for, a table at a restaurant, cars to slow down and stop for you as you cross the street.

Kathleen Belew, a professor and author on the subject of White power, mentioned in her interviews with both the New York Times and the New Yorker the idea that replacement theory is not only becoming more mainstream but is also an iteration of an idea that takes many forms: the preservation of Whiteness. This happens all over the place: overturning Roe v. Wade so White babies aren’t aborted, anti-immigration sentiment that maintains White birthrates, restricting the right to privacy that may pave the way for dismantling interracial marriage out of a fear of miscegenation, and removing LGBTQ+ rights out of a fear that these rights will “lure” White women out of heteronormative reproductive roles.  Preserving Whiteness is obviously at the root of eugenics and forced sterilization and the increased capital and profit which White enslavers gained through the forced reproduction of enslaved Black women. And, don’t forget, preserving Whiteness through the defense of the perceived “purity” of White women is what led to the lynchings of thousands of Black men.

I say all that as a reminder that this is not the first time we have asked, “What does it take for our communities to be whole?” Yes, we are hurting and we’re allowed.  We are nervous about what will be left after all of this unraveling and we are saddened at the quickness with which we move on, even as we walk away from it.  We need to do more.  Black and brown communities have long been vocalizing exactly what is needed to make our communities whole, to center their experiences and lives after centuries of the forced centering of Whiteness.  Listen, practice vulnerability, be humbled by what you don’t know, hold yourself and others around you accountable, and move through the discomfort.