Racism and Conversion: Homily for the 6th Sunday of Easter 2022

Readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052222.cfm

Preached at Old St. Mary’s Church in Chicago: https://youtu.be/ZhCMzSsnApM?t=1685

Last Saturday afternoon an 18-year old white man from Conklin, New York exited his vehicle in the parking lot of a Tops grocery store in Buffalo and began shooting. By the time of his arrest he had shot 13 people, 11 of whom were Black. 10 of those shooting victims have died.

Many valid concerns have been raised since the shooting. How the shooter obtained such deadly and efficient means to kill, legally. How a young person could be radicalized so effectively by means of the internet. How he is not the first.

Amidst all of that rightful discussion and concern over related issues, we don’t want to miss this alarming detail of distance: the drive from Conklin to Buffalo is about 3 and half hours. Why, if gun violence or social alienation were motivating factors did the shooter not unleash his violent rage upon his majority white town?

A manifesto alleged to have been written by the shooter obtained by authorities offers a plain and beyond disturbing answer: the 14208 zip code is, at 78%, the highest majority Black population in upstate New York. The shooter used a graph from a Google search to map when the Buffalo grocery store would be busiest, and give him the best chance of shooting the most Black people.

I offer these simple facts and numbers because I fear the glossing of these important details has already been happening. The story may be caught up in, and maybe even soon forgotten, as yet another mass shooting to which many may be growing numb.

The shooting was a hate crime and an act of racist-fueled terrorism. The shooter drove to a Buffalo supermarket to murder Black people. This is obvious and undebatable. And yet, confoundingly, I think this still needs to be said and insisted upon, especially in majority white spaces.

Racism predates the founding of this nation as well as my own nation of Canada, and the success, by amoral standards, of our nations are premised upon it. Mass structural, institutional, and economic foundations were made possible by the elevation of white men as chosen, favoured,(self-evidently) equal persons in the eyes of God. Simultaneously, white dominance was established and sustained by the systematic dehumanization and ownership of…