Association of Black Anthropologists

May 20, 2022

On Saturday, May 14, 2022 an 18-year-old male white supremacist, outfitted in body armor, and carrying a semiautomatic rifle with the N-word painted on the barrel, a shotgun, and a hunting rifle, entered Tops grocery store located in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, NY and opened fire on shoppers while livestreaming the event on Twitch. In the aftermath of this carnage, thirteen people had been shot, eleven of them Black.

Ten people were killed. The names of those killed were Roberta A. Drury of Buffalo, N.Y., age 32; Margus D. Morrison of Buffalo, N.Y., age 52; Andre Mackneil of Auburn, N.Y., age 53; Aaron Salter of Lockport, N.Y. – age 55; Geraldine Talley of Buffalo, N.Y., age 62; Celestine Chaney of Buffalo, N.Y., age 65; Heyward Patterson of Buffalo, N.Y., age 67; Katherine Massey of Buffalo, N.Y., age 72; Pearl Young of Buffalo, N.Y., age 77; and Ruth Whitfield of Buffalo, N.Y., age 86.

While the details of this act of white supremacist terror are still emerging, it has been revealed that the accused had made his views known to many. In a series of online statements over the past five months, including a one hundred and eighty page “manifesto” espousing white-supremacist beliefs, largely copied from far-right extremism venues such as 4chan, the killer railed against those he called “replacers.” Replacement theory – the belief of far-right white racists (nationalists, Nazis, Klu Klux Klan members, and other white supremacists) that high birth rates among Black people and open immigration policies will one day lead to the end of America’s white majority – has been a regular theme circulated by FOX NEWS, and has been mainstreamed into the largely-white GOP and white communities throughout the U.S. The assassin stated that his goal was to “kill as many Blacks as possible.” And he had intended to continue to kill more Black people after the carnage at the Tops supermarket.

The Association of Black Anthropologists condemns, in no uncertain terms, this act of brutal racist violence. Yet we know that Black people have, from the time of their enslavement, suffered persistent and barbaric racial terror in the U.S.: the lynching sprees of the early 20th century, the violent destruction, including bombings, of Black communities, genocidal police abuse, other vigilante terror such as the 2015 assassination by a white supremacist of the congregants of Mother Emmanuel Church in South Carolina. These are but a sample of the types of racial violence against the US Black community, and they are more than matched by structural racial violence in the form of economic and social inequality, mass incarceration, inadequate health care, and so on.

As Black anthropologists, we know well that this latest attack on Black people is a symptom of the larger structure of white supremacy upon which this country was founded. In fact, the Association of Black Anthropologists repeatedly issues statements decrying the devastating impact of white supremacy on our communities – and the world. 

We call on all anthropologists to not only condemn the Buffalo attack, but to also recognize that this individual act of racist violence is a symptom of a society, and an unequal world, structured through white supremacy. It is no accident that the global far right and neo-Nazi movements are becoming more popular, and attacks against nonwhite and non-Christian communities are increasing. We must treat the disease and not the symptom, and address both the individual and mundane, and the structuring violences that continue to affirm the dominant position of whiteness at the expense of the nonwhite peoples and communities.

In closing, horrific events such as these are reminders that we must not be inured to the normative antiblack violence of the United States. We must also remind ourselves that Black people, wherever they live, must continue to struggle for our right to live lives of dignity and to be free, one day, of the scourge of White supremacy.

You can donate to the following organizations supporting the families and the community devastated by this tragedy:

Buffalo 5/14 Survivors Fund: https://nationalcompassion.org/fund/buffalo-survivors-fund/

Feed More WNY: https://www.feedmorewny.org/donate/

June 6, 2020

Almost six years ago the Association of Black Anthropologists staged a memorable die-in and issued a statement in protest against anti-Black racism in the U.S. Today, the U.S. is in flames again because of the escalating domestic terrorism of white vigilantes and police officers who, in a span of months, killed unarmed Ahmaud Aubrey while jogging in a South Georgia neighborhood, unarmed Breonna Taylor in her apartment in Louisville, KY, unarmed George Floyd with a cop’s knee on his neck in Minneapolis, MN, and unarmed Black trans man Tony McDade in Tallahassee, FL. In March 2020, police and paramedics watched as Monika Diamond, a Black trans woman, was shot to death in Charlotte, NC as paramedics were treating her in an ambulance. These murders are in addition to the continuing weaponizing of whiteness – as the country witnessed a white woman threaten to call the police on Black man Christian Cooper who was bird watching in Central Park, New York. 

This pandemic of anti-black racism also finds equal expression in the disproportionate impacts of the novel coronavirus pandemic on the Black population. Though representing only 13 percent of the population, Black Americans account for almost one-third of infections nationwide, and Black Americans are dying of COVID-19 at three times the rate of white people. This health disparity and inequity is the result of Black Americans not only comprising a majority of “essential” jobs that put them at increased risk for COVID-19 infection; it is also the result of centuries of marginalization, disenfranchisement, and stress that translates into poorer health outcomes (co-morbidities or underlying conditions especially) that, again, put Black Americans at increased risk for infection.

As it pertains to the ongoing atrocities of the criminal policing system and the accumulated health effects of racism in this country, we charge genocide as we did in 2014. 

White supremacist violence is at the heart of the founding of the United States. While the extreme manifestations of this genocidal violence take many forms, and ebbs and flows, the structures remain in place. For Black people, this has meant incalculable racial terror and a continuous struggle against numerous systems of oppression – the policing and carceral apparatus, the inequitable health care system, the education apparatus, social and economic hierarchies, and neoliberal policies among others. Our resolve and determination against these systems of tyranny cannot be understated. But we are aware that there is no way forward if this foundational anti-Blackness is not acknowledged and reckoned with, in this country.

It is for this reason that we firmly assert the nearly-universal claim that “Black Lives Matter,” from allies and supporters, need to be followed up with both introspection and clear and concrete measures for redress and restitution. This action is especially crucial for the discipline of anthropology. 

We urge our non-Black anthropology colleagues, especially our White colleagues who tend to reproduce the toxic effects of whiteness in anthropology departments, think tanks, research groups, and other spaces where anthropology is practiced across the nation, to move beyond the soul searching, despondency, and white guilt that this moment (and similar other moments) has engendered. Instead, we want members of the discipline to start at “home,” to accept the ways that anthropology has been and continues to be implicated in the project of white supremacy (both in its implicit and explicit manifestations) and to lay out a clear path for moving forward. We want members of the discipline of anthropology to see the ways that white supremacy is manifest in their curricula, syllabi, graduate student recruitment and mentoring, hiring, and promotion practices. We want them to see and correct their refusal or inability to teach race, racism, the pathology of whiteness, and the banality of white supremacy; their marginalization of Black scholars and their scholarship. We also challenge them to evaluate their commitment to being, paraphrasing the words of Black anthropologist, William S. Willis, “a discipline of the subjugated races.” This call to recognition and action is only the first step in the discipline’s long journey towards decolonization. 

As Black anthropologists, we have consistently demonstrated that there is much more to Black life than the need for affirmation from the very people abiding in systems that oppress us. Our global Black communities have always worked to destroy those systems. This moment is no different. We fully support the protests of rage and affirmation that have exploded throughout the country and throughout the world. And we condemn the current violent police repression at city, state, and national levels, including the call by the President of the United States and U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) to deploy U.S. military troops to disband the protest movements that have spread around the country. Not only are militaries ill-prepared and untrained for peacekeeping in civilian contexts, these irresponsible and inflammatory calls also court the deeper involvement of pro-Trump militias, many of whom are heavily armed, subscribe to white nationalist ideologies, and may react to what they perceive as an official call to violence in support of their leader. The use of the military will only further escalate violence, lead to loss of innocent life, violate core civil and human rights, and continue to polarize our citizenry and undermine democracy. 

We demand a justice system that begins with the premise that policing is and always has been a form of white supremacy. We demand that local, city, and state governments engage in meaningful dialogue, which involves humbly listening to the protesters and taking their demands seriously. 

We also encourage all anthropologists to donate to bail funds to free protesters, to continue to circulate information rooted in decolonized ethical research, to support movements for reparations for Black folks globally, and the ABA encourages Black people to protect their health (emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual) as we continue in this struggle.