Once more, we are grappling with white supremacist violence, this time in Buffalo. It is a willful act of one, but it is shaped by a systemic, entrenched, violent ideology of many.
I confess that it is one more act of violence that overwhelms us, and it’s easy for those of us not directly vulnerable or threatened — I feel this — to want to look away and become distracted so we won’t have to experience the emotions around it. But many do not have this luxury of choice, and this requires white people to care and act.
So this morning, we all sit with it, and we discern how we are to act — how we are to decry violence like this, how we are to examine the roots of where it comes from, and how we are to deconstruct the ways that its beliefs and biases live inside us too.
Black people deserve to flourish in this country. Black children and Black elders with names, and loves, and personalities, and dreams deserve to go to the grocery store without fear of being mauled by white supremacist gun violence. There is too much vulnerability, and in this era in which we live, people are not just vulnerable; they are often made vulnerable. People with power, and systems with power, make people vulnerable when that wouldn’t and shouldn’t be the case otherwise.
This means that those of us who benefit from the people in power, and benefit from the systems in power, need to use what we have and who we are to stand in solidarity with people made vulnerable.
Smuggling Grace 