Buffalo shooting shows the urgent need to dismantle racism, love our neighbors
Buffalo is known as the City of Good Neighbors — nice people, nice place to live. Indeed, here in the other Erie County, we know that’s true because we are all connected in one way or another to our good neighbors 90 miles up the lakeshore. And, when news of a racially motivated massacre at a Tops market in a Black neighborhood reached our collective newsfeeds this past week, a wave of shock and sadness rippled across our community.
Sadly, this shooting was the latest in a growing number of hate crimes against Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) — mainly Black — in America. The slaughter was startling and part of a growing trend. The New York Times reported this week that in 2020, an FBI report showed the highest spike in hate crimes in a dozen years. Further, hate crimes against Black Americans increased nearly 46% from 2019 to 2020. Take a moment to take that in — it’s a dramatic increase in just one year and those are only the hate crimes reported to law enforcement.
The motivation for these crimes is an insatiable disdain for people of color — racism boiled over into unspeakable violence. It’s not new, but the resurgence of violence against Black and brown Americans is rising at an alarming rate.
We at Diverse Erie are working to combat racism and invest in initiatives and ideas that advance equity and inclusion across Erie County. Equity is required to level the playing field, so we all have a chance to succeed at the same level. Advancing equity is necessary because of our nation’s past, which includes the shameful stain of slavery and segregation that caused a racist paradigm which has been difficult to break.
More:Erie Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Commission still in early stages, wary of budget cuts
As an organization, Diverse Erie is committed to being a part of the conversation — and it can be difficult, but the quest to end racism must begin at home. Unconscious bias exists in all of us. Unconscious bias affects how we perceive and react to others based on biases, and once they are recognized, the conversation truly begins.
The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered a white teacher in Iowa, Jane Elliott, created a groundbreaking experiment that started a conversation that endures today. By dividing her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups to facilitate a daring lesson in discrimination, she was able to bring to life the way Black Americans had been feeling through the eyes of these young people.
It was a compelling lesson in humanity, and I encourage you to watch it with your children — it's free to watch on PBS. A friend of mine encouraged me to watch it earlier this year and five decades after it was made it is just as impactful. It is also a sad reminder that Martin Luther King Jr. lost his life in a violent act of racism more than 50 years ago, and 10 Black Americans experienced the same hateful and violent fate walking innocently through a Tops market in Buffalo just a week ago.
Being willing to talk to your children and family members about racist language, tendencies, beliefs, or misbeliefs is a great place to start. Don’t be afraid to use your dinner table to discuss the danger of harboring racist thoughts and try to replace them with thoughts of abundance versus scarcity — there is enough for us all to succeed and live in harmony. Above all, like our friends in Buffalo, to whom we send our sympathy as they come together to try to accept the unacceptable and cope with the unthinkable, we must all be good neighbors.
On Sunday, take a moment to reflect on the lives lost to racism and commit to holding someone accountable for racist comments or actions — being a good neighbor starts by doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Gary Lee is the chief administrative officer for Diverse Erie, Erie County's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Commission.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Buffalo shooting underscores need to fight racism in Erie and U.S.
