Summary in seconds: the Buffalo massacre timeline: blacks versus whites on the socioeconomic spectrum, and the role of the “Great Replacement Theory”.
It was 2:30 PM, on Saturday, May 14, 2022, * when an old unassuming car drove slowly into the parking lot of the only supermarket in a predominantly black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. Behind the steering wheel of that fading-blue-colored car was an 18-year-old young man who had driven for several hours to reach the Tops supermarket. The driver, Payton S. Gendron1, was the only passenger on board in that rusty Ford; however, he was not alone. Watching his live-streaming camera on “Twitch2” was an unknown number of subscribers.
Once his vehicle came to a complete stop in front of the supermarket’s main entrance, Mr. Gendron stepped out of his old, small car with his AR-15-style rifle and he started spreading his flesh-shattering hate to any human around him who just happened to have dark skin.
Wearing a bulletproof vest, a tactical helmet, and carrying plenty of ammunition, Mr. Gendron was full of confidence when he entered the supermarket to continue his rampage. Within a few minutes, the killer managed to end the lives of 10 human beings, ranging in age from 20 to 86, and were just grocery shopping. Their only crime was the color of their skin.
Why would anybody commit their life to so much evil? The short answer is—it is complicated. The long answer is that Mr. Gendron and his victims are both Americans “in name only.” In real life, they belong to two different groups of people at opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum of America.
At the affluent end of the spectrum, Mr. Gendron lived in Conklin, a rural suburb of New York state; a predominantly white small town (almost 90% Caucasian and less than 1% African American-per 2020 census), with a median household income of $68, 000, and where 9% of the residents live below the poverty line.
Mr. Gendron’s victims, however, were struggling at the impoverished end of the same spectrum, in Buffalo-Niagara. Buffalo is one of the most racially segregated metropolitan regions in the nation3. This perpetual racial and economic segregation imposed a wide range of burdens on people of color, impairing their health, education, job access, and wealth.
All Mr. Gendron needed to cross the line of life sanctity was a clear, unambiguous doctrine—a doctrine that provided him with a clear map to which clan he belonged to and which tribe posed a threat to his own. This dogma had to be simple, clear, and easy to comprehend for a simple-mined person ready to act, not to think. And on the right-wing media, he found his new faith “The Great Replacement Theory4 & 5.”
References
1. What we know about Buffalo supermarket shooting suspect Payton Gendron
By Shimon Prokupecz, Christina Maxouris, Dakin Andone, Samanth Beech, and Amir Vera, CNN. (Updated 1:45 AM ET, Wed May 18, 2022)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/15/us/payton-gendron-buffalo-shooting-suspect-what-we-know/index.html
2. Twitch: is an American video live streaming service, it is operated by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc.
3. A City Divided: A Brief History of Segregation Buffalo
By Anna Blatto. (April 2018)
4. “The Great Replacement Theory”: is an extreme right-wing conspiracy theory propagated by French author Renaud Camus. The original theory promoted the idea that a group of French elites, whom Renaud Camus defined as “replacists” were bringing in people from non-white ethnic groups, particularly from Muslim-majority countries, to replace white Europeans of French descent. This theory has been adopted by many white supremacists and promoters of far-right tendencies in many countries, including the United States.
5. What is the ‘great replacement’ and how is it tied to the Buffalo shooting suspect?
By DUSTIN JONES. (May 16, 202212:35 AM ET)
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/16/1099034094/what-is-the-great-replacement-theory
* This article was previously posted on May, 2022 in my earlier blog “My Islam”