| Friend,
A church elder. A grandmother. A grandfather. A security guard. A Sunday school teacher. A baker. A civil rights activist. A jitney driver. A father of three. A young girl, with “a lot of love to give.”1
Ruth Whitfield, Celestine Chaney, Andre Mackneil, Aaron Salter, Pearl Young, Geraldine Talley, Katherine Massey, Heyward Patterson, Margus Morrison and Roberta Drury were all undoubtedly much more than that list above can ever capture.
Ten people living their lives and loving their families and going to work or stopping by to pick up a few groceries in Buffalo on a Saturday afternoon. All of them gone — murdered by a white-supremacist terrorist just because they were there and just because they were Black.
Like you, we are looking at these faces from Buffalo again and again and trying to remember so many others, those of people going to a Bible study in Charleston, or a synagogue in Pittsburgh, or a superstore in El Paso, or out for a run, or to the corner store for some candy. Every time believing after an unthinkable tragedy that something must be different, something must change now, right?
The violence of white supremacy was on full display last weekend. But we know it is around us all the time: in law, in customs, in social norms, in politics — and in our media system, especially in our media system.
Just turn on Tucker Carlson any weeknight. Or look at the vile content Facebook and YouTube are recommending. Or think about the ways even the story of what happened in Buffalo is already being distorted.
This tragedy could be – it should be – a catalyst to a fundamental reckoning with the media system we’ve created and the danger it poses to Black lives. It could be a moment where we contend with the ways white supremacy and anti-Blackness show up in our media system.
What if people in media, tech and politics stopped just “doing their jobs” and committed to making a change? What if they stopped participating in the production, financing and spread of racist propaganda? What if they put the racists’ megaphones out of business? What if they changed the terms by which the social-media platforms operate? What if they reckoned with our history instead of trying to bury it?2
What if, to quote Color of Change’s Rashad Robinson, the media executives and politicians – and, yes, all of us reading this, too – took “protecting Black people as seriously as they take protecting their profits, protecting themselves and protecting the narrow group of people they have cared about until now?”3
What if, this time, they refused to look away?
What kind of world would be possible then?
In solidarity,
Craig Aaron and Jessica J. González
Co-CEOs
freepress.net
P.S. Read more from our Co-CEOs on the Free Press blog.
1. “Rod Watson: Shooter pulled the trigger but others share blame for poisonous racial climate,” Buffalo News, May 16, 2022 2. American Racism and the Buffalo Shooting," The New Yorker, May 15, 2022 3. Rashad Robinson Twitter Thread, May 15, 2022  |
