The president of the United States did something presidential this past week when he visited Buffalo, N.Y., to visit a memorial and show solidarity with the community after a racially motivated shooting in which a young man killed 10 people.
This is what presidents do. They empathize with fellow Americans after a terrible hurt. That's almost a requirement of the job.
"What happened here is simple and straightforward: Terrorism. Terrorism. Domestic terrorism," President Biden said. "Violence inflicted into the service of hate and the vicious thirst for power that defines one group of people being inherently inferior to any other group, a hate that through the media and politics, the Internet, has radicalized angry, alienated, lost and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced."
The president is at his best at these sort of things. Unfortunately they happen all too often. But we get a nagging feeling that his words aren't going to convince many white supremacists to see things from his point of view. We're not sure if any words, from any man or woman today, will suddenly convince those "angry, alienated, lost and isolated" people to turn away from hate.
If an 18-year-old teenager can be radicalized to hate so much that he guns down fellow Americans at a grocery, how about the 50-year-old who's been feeding on hate for three decades or more?
After the killings in Buffalo, and the president's visit there, a friend writes that posturing from any politician isn't likely to change minds. White supremacy goes back centuries. And at least in America, such "thinking" justified slavery, despite the immorality of America's original sin. It was as bankrupt an idea then as it is now, but the whole idea of a racially superior group of people still hangs around. Like a stone around the population's neck.
But our friend says, correctly, that there is an answer. Or, better put, an Answer. For a counter-force to white supremacy can be religion.
Oh, sure, religion has been misused--a lot--in many ways, especially in this country, and even when it comes to this subject. And not all religions believe in the equality of all humankind. But Christianity certainly does.
It teaches that we are all created and considered equal in the eyes of God. This was the deep belief of the abolitionists in America and England. And among those in the civil rights movement. And among the best religious thinkers today.
It's difficult to pick up a rifle and begin stalking people when you live by this: "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." (John 13:34)
An editorial demanding that Americans Repent! might seem as effective as all those who make the argument that we should excise the Second Amendment from the Constitution. Or outlaw the 300 million-plus guns already on the streets in this country. Or pass some other law to add to the hundreds already on the books to slow down the kind of hate crime we saw in Buffalo this past week.
Maybe. But like a wise man once said, people lose the darkness when they walk in the sunlight.