Another Preventable Tragedy

Another senseless shooting has left yet more African-Americans dead at the hands of a white supremist with a history of unaddressed mental illness and an easily obtained illegal weapon.  Let us remind ourselves that this is not simply random.  We can stop these shootings.  We are choosing not to, in no small part, because the victims are Black.

We know the things we need to do.  It is not complicated.  It doesn’t help that the shooter was able to pay $60 for a kit that could turn a legal weapon into a military one.  There is no reason that we cannot, as Governor Hochul is promising to do, regulate online hate speech, which is not now, and never has been, and should never be, protected.  We can improve our mental health care system.  The vast majority of people with severe mental illness will never do the kinds of things Gendron did. But, getting all people with mental illness the care they need is the only way to ensure that we will find the Gendron’s before they act out violently.  What an incentive to finally do justice by our psychiatrically disabled.

Then, there is the hard part.  Something must be done about right-wing commentary legitimizing the heinous racism that motivated this man.  Sanitized versions of some of the most virulent forms of racist thought, ones connected with violence, and Gendron’s justifications, have been showing up on major news outlets.  This propaganda in sheep’s clothing masquerades as journalism.  In reality, it capitalizes on inciting Americans to hate one another, seeking to make it impossible to overcome division in an increasingly diverse nation.

What is most disturbing is just how many Americans are unable or unwilling to see through this thinly veiled racism.  Increasing numbers have turned to nativist philosophies that focus their animus on immigrants.  These philosophies are not less racist, or less dangerous.  They are  

forms of racism that have been made socially acceptable; and, when we allow pepole to make one form of animus acceptable, we lend credence to all forms of animus, including the kind that motivate people to murder.  Turning their hatred toward one group, versus another, does not mean these commentators do not have blood on their hands.  

The Anti-Defamation League had it right when it called for the ouster of Tucker Carlson.  This needs to be a national movement and needs to be a national movement now.  There is no reason American citizens should, or should have to, sit back and watch people who claim to be legitimate journalists parrot anti-Black and anti-Semitic propaganda.  The American people do not and should not have to stand for this.  The answers may test the first amendment, and they will definitely call for a revisit of the nation’s hate speech laws.  But that is a job for every generation, to find new solutions as new technologies and new threats to democracy emerge.  American democracy depends on doing what must be done to stop another preventable tragedy from occurring.