President Biden traveled to Buffalo, New York to talk with the families that lost their loved ones due to the massacre that took place over the weekend. The shooter said he committed the violent act because he felt like whites were being replaced by minorities. AURN’s Ebony McMorris spoke with leading intellectual scholar and author Dr. Cornel West about his reaction to the tragedy.
“I thought of the last speech of the great Malcolm X in Rochester, New York, February 16th, 1965. When he said that Black people are not just victims of a racist order, but Black people are prisoners of war. There’s been a war going on for 400 years, from slave ship to slave auction to plantation to lynching tree to mass incarceration,” said West.
“And so in that sense, I wasn’t surprised. You know, I mean, as a Christian, I’m never surprised by evil. I’m never paralyzed by despair. I have to fortify myself. I got to get ready and put on my armor. And so we get another manifestation of this war that’s been going on. It’s psychic war, it’s spiritual war, it’s social wars, economic war, and it’s physical war. It could be Emanuel Church. It could be Buffalo, New York. It goes on and on and on.”
