Killing hope

By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor

Three years ago, a white supremacist gunned down nine Black worshippers at Mother Emanuel A. M. E. Church in Charleston, S. C. That massacre sparked a national movement to do away with symbols of racial hatred and division like Confederate monuments and memorials that honor white supremacists.

Unfortunately, the rise of President Donald Trump, increased attacks on people of color and major white nationalist rallies like the one that claimed the life of a woman in Virginia last year have no interest in racial harmony or living in a diverse democracy. That point was further driven home with the recent brutal slaughter of eleven worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. The same week of the synagogue shooting, a white gunman killed two Black people at a Louisville, Kentucky supermarket after failing to gain entry to a Black church.

There has been nothing to suggest that these incidents will slow down or cease altogether. It is difficult to understand why anyone would think that slaughtering defenseless people would prove his or her superiority. We should be ever mindful of Dr. Neely Fuller and the late Dr. Frances Cress Welsing’s observation that the system of racism/white supremacy is fueled by white fear of genetic annihilation.

If people of color and other historically oppressed groups are serious about surviving and thriving in America, we’ve got some serious work to do. If not us, who? If not now, when?

This article originally published in the November 5, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.