When will Congress call domestic terrorism by its name?

I can’t imagine how Garnell Whitfield Jr. did it, how he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to demand some sort of action from the country’s leaders on gun violence and on the domestic terrorism wrought by white supremacy. But as I was riveted by his testimony, I realized the strength and courage he must have drawn from the memory of the mother he will never stop grieving.

Ruth Whitfield, at 86, was the oldest victim in a shooting at a Buffalo supermarket that left 10 people, all African Americans, dead. It was May 14, not even a month ago. Yet there have been so many shootings since, it sometimes seems as if the rest of the world has forgotten. An 18-year-old white man is accused of carrying out the racist attack, accused of driving hours to hunt and murder as many Black people as possible.

“I would ask every senator to imagine the faces of your mothers as you look at the face of my mother, Mrs. Ruth Whitfield,” Garnell Whitfield testified on Tuesday.

Would they be able to do that?

“Ask yourself,” he said, “is there nothing we can do?”

The track record isn’t great.

I’m not sure what Whitfield was expecting from lawmakers who have a hard time even naming what happened. How, then, could they put themselves in his shoes?

Garnell Whitfield is far ahead of our elected representatives, many of whom want, have always wanted, to distract and downplay, to accuse others of bad intentions, to look everywhere but into the eyes and the broken heart of a man whose life has been forever changed.

Whitfield’s plainspoken speech must have startled those reluctant to call out “domestic terrorism” and “white supremacy” for the dangers they are, despite the warnings from FBI Director Christopher Wray’s March 2021 testimony before the same committee about the connection between the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and right-wing “domestic terrorism.”

They would rather, as Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas have done and continue to do, point to acts of violence by those on the left and accuse Democrats of using any effort to counter domestic threats as an excuse to go after political opponents.

Local News Roundup: Recapping the NC primary and reflecting on the Buffalo mass shooting

The North Carolina primary this week was full of stories, including the seeming end of Pat McCrory’s political career, a decisive loss for U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn and some surprises in the Democratic City Council race. Sheriff Garry McFadden kept his seat in Mecklenburg County, and Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles won her primary.

People around the country — including Charlotte — are reacting to Sunday’s shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, where a gunman killed 10 and injured three.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed a bill into law that will ban transgender students from playing women’s sports.

And yet another earthquake is felt just outside the Charlotte area.

Mike Collins and our roundtable of reporters delve into those stories and all the week’s top local and regional news on the Charlotte Talks local news roundup.

GUESTS:

Erik Spanberg, managing editor for the Charlotte Business Journal

Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com, host of the Rollcall podcast “Equal Time”

Steve Harrison, WFAE’s political reporter

Seema Iyer, chief legal correspondent WJZY Queen City News

What happens to America when optimism dies?

When I interviewed Majority Whip James Clyburn in 2014 about his memoir “Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black,” the South Carolina Democrat was confident in America’s ability to find its way, no matter how extreme the political swings might appear at any given time.

“The country from its inception is like the pendulum on a clock,” the congressman told me. “It goes back and forward. It tops out to the right and starts back to the left — it tops out to the left and starts back to the right.” And remember, he said, it “spends twice as much time in the center.”

I have always appreciated Clyburn’s wisdom, his passion and his commitment to his constituents. But most of all, I have admired the optimism of this child of the South, who grew up hemmed in by Jim Crow’s separate and unequal grip, yet who believed in the innate goodness of America and its people. Clyburn put his own life on the line to drag the country — kicking and screaming — into a more just future.

He was convinced, I believe, that no matter how off balance America might become, the country would eventually right itself.

A lot has changed since that afternoon, when he sat at a long table, signing books and chatting in the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture in Charlotte, N.C., right beside his beloved wife. Emily Clyburn, a passionate civil rights activist, died in 2019, though Clyburn often references her wise words.

That optimism, however, has lost its glow.

Clyburn’s worries drove our conversation in July 2021, the second of two times he was a guest on my CQ Roll Call “Equal Time” podcast. The topic was voting rights, and Clyburn had opinions about the Senate procedure that would eventually stall legislation to reform those rights and restore provisions invalidated by a Supreme Court decision in 2013.

“When it comes to the constitutional issues like voting, guaranteed to Blacks by the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution, that should not be filibustered,” he said. And about restrictive laws being passed in states? “I want you to call it what it is. Use the word: nullification. It is voter nullification.”

“This isn’t about just voting; this is about whether or not we will have a democracy or an autocracy.”

With those remarks in the back of my mind, it was still startling to hear Clyburn last week on MSNBC, talking about his GOP House colleagues, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, and their waffling about complying with subpoenas from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

When asked if the government and Capitol Hill could “be fixed,” Clyburn, known for his philosophical “this too shall pass” mantra, instead replied, “I don’t know.” He talked about threats to undermine democracy and said the country is “teetering on the edge.”

And that was before the shooting in Buffalo that claimed the lives of 10 beautiful Americans doing something as routine as Saturday supermarket shopping. African Americans were targeted by an 18-year-old who wore his “white supremacist” label like a badge of honor in a heavily plagiarized racist screed, a man whose stated goal was to “kill as many blacks as possible.”

Is it any wonder Clyburn’s optimism has been waning in these times?

An examination of replacement theory in America

The racist shooting in Buffalo, New York, over the weekend left 10 people dead and injured three others. Law enforcement is investigating the shooting as a hate crime.

It is the latest in a list of similar acts of violence: Charleston, South Carolina, Charlottesville, Virginia, Pittsburgh, El Paso, Texas and Atlanta to name a few. All have an element of fear of the other. This is part of the basis of the “great replacement theory.”

The great replacement theory began as a white nationalist movement last century in Europe, according to the anti-defamation league. It has grown into the fear, especially in America, that white Christians will be replaced by nonwhite, non Christian people and immigrants.

This refrain has become more mainstream in recent years. In Charlottesville, the mob chanted “Jews will not replace us,” while the El Paso shooter said he was fighting against what he called a Hispanic invasion.

Increasingly, GOP leaders and commentators have championed this dialogue. They have complained about how race is taught in schools and pushed back on efforts to expand voting rights. U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, the third-highest ranking Republican in the House, used ads that echoed part of the replacement theory.

GUESTS:

James E. Ford, executive director at the Center for Racial Equity in Education

Mary C. Curtis, columnist for Rollcall.com, host of the Rollcall podcast “Equal Time”

Shannon Reid, associate professor at UNC Charlotte specializing in white supremacy