White Masculinity and the Buffalo Massacre

Most mainstream coverage about the horrific massacre in Buffalo has focused, quite rightly, on racism. But there is more to the story. The killer is not just a young white person. He is a young white man. For us to have any hope of preventing future such incidents, and effectively countering the belief systems and social forces that produced him and so many others, we need to understand the complex intersections of race and gender that lie at the heart of these ongoing tragedies.

As our fragile democracy faces growing threats from exactly the sort of right-wing terrorism on display last weekend in Buffalo, we ignore this gendered element at our peril.