Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer delivered a passionate address on the floor of the chamber on Monday, decrying the violence that struck the city of Buffalo in his home state of New York over the weekend as fitting a pattern of racism in America.
“Two days ago, barbarism descended upon the city of Buffalo,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “It was the deadliest shooting in the history of Buffalo and the worst mass shooting in America this year. Today, we hold in our hearts every single New Yorker whose life was tragically cut short during Saturday’s violence. We weep knowing nothing – nothing – will ever be able to bring them back.”
On Saturday, a white 18-year-old – while wearing body armor and livestreaming with a helmet camera – opened fire at around 2:30 p.m. outside Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo, fatally shooting 10 people and injuring at least three others at the supermarket. Officials say the suspect researched the local demographics and arrived a day in advance to conduct reconnaissance with the intent of killing as many Black people as possible.
The 10 dead include Aaron Salter, a retired Buffalo police officer working as a security guard at the store. Ruth Whitfield, 86, was picking up groceries after visiting her husband at a nursing home, as she did every day.
Katherine Massey, 72, was “a beautiful soul” who was killed while shopping, sister Barbara Massey said.
Heyward Patterson, 67, was a deacon at a nearby church. He’d gone by the church’s soup kitchen before heading to the supermarket, where he offered an informal taxi service and would drive people home with their bags.
The other people killed in the shooting were Roberta A. Drury, 32, Margus D. Morrison, 52, Andre Mackneil, 53, Geraldine Talley, 62, Celestine Chaney, 65, and Pearl Young, 77. The injured included Zaire Goodman, 20, Jennifer Warrington, 50, and Christopher Braden, 55.
Schumer will join President Joe Biden and the first lady to visit Buffalo on Tuesday, where they will “visit the families and visit with local officials still investigating the attack” as well as thank the “brave first responders who were at the scene moments after the shooting,” the senator said.
The senior senator from New York went on to say the deadly shooting in Buffalo fits into “part of an ugly pattern, one that dates to the earliest days of this nation: racism has always been, and unfortunately still is, the poison of America.”
In the days and weeks leading up to the attack, suspect Payton Gendron reportedly penned a 180-page document outlining his thoughts on the “great replacement theory,” a racist ideology rooted in a belief that the U.S. should belong only to white people. All others, the document said, were “replacers” who should be eliminated by force or terror. The attack was intended to intimidate all non-white, non-Christian people and get them to leave the country, it said.
The document also purportedly made mention of avowed white supremacist Dylann Roof, who in 2015 opened fire at a Bible study at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine parishioners.
“To most Americans, these ideas are transparently repugnant and affront to our core values. They directly contravene the message of welcome and opportunity symbolized by the Statue of Liberty,” Schumer said of the beliefs shared by Roof and Gendron. “But unfortunately, with each passing year, it seems harder and harder to ignore that the echoes of replacement theory and other racially motivated views are increasingly coming out into the open and given purported legitimacy by some MAGA Republicans and cable news pundits.”
Schumer went on to call out Fox News host Tucker Carlson by name, citing a New York Times report claiming Carlson has employed racist rhetoric implying Democrats and other so-called “elites” want to replace white, working-class Americans at least 400 times on his show since 2016.
“It is not enough for outlets like Fox News to simply condemn Saturday’s violence and condemn shooters’ racist views, and then return to their regularly scheduled programming,” he said. “To have an impact in the fight against domestic violent extremism, Fox News and their hosts need to actually stop spreading dangerous ideas like replacement theory on their shows.”
It was a far more pointed rebuke than one offered by the White House, who – while condemning white supremacy and racist rhetoric in all its forms – would not comment on Carlson’s personal role in fomenting such views.
“Any one person, doesn’t matter who they are, who spews this type of hatred, we’re going to call out, we’re going to condemn that,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday when asked if Carlson or other prominent figures in the Republican party were amplifying racist rhetoric. “I’m not going to speak or call out any individual names. I’m saying that this is something that we need to call out.”
Jean-Pierre added that the violent Unite the Right white supremacist rally held in Charlottesville in 2017 “was a major factor in the president deciding to run,” acknowledging: “Many of those dark forces still exist today and the president is as determined as he was back then, and he is determined today to make sure that we fight back against those forces of hate and evil and violence.”
