The Buffalo Attack and What Toni Morrison Had to Say About How We Respond To Evil

And why she thought goodness was much more interesting

Well hello! I’m so glad you’re here. Some reflections on Toni Morrison and why the Nobel Laureate believed goodness is complex and evil is not. And then a little postcard from the New York art world. As always, if you love this newsletter, please forward it, or subscribe. Yours, Susanna

I got a preview of the annual art extravaganza that is Frieze New York, an event in which dozens of galleries from around the world gather under one roof in Manhattan. The attendee fashion was almost as much fun as the art. But I was really blown away by one of Kathleen Ryan’s sculptures of moldy fruit made out of gemstones. I’d only seen photos of these bejeweled wonders, and in real life, they are everything—mortality, decay, and decadence stitched together.

Toni Morrison and the Lessons of the Buffalo Shooting

On a windy February night in 2016, I went to hear Toni Morrison read from her just-published novel “God Help the Child.”  More than a thousand people, mostly women, stood in a long looping line outside a Brooklyn synagogue. We were there for her fictional characters, but we were also hungry for whatever she had to say about that particular moment in history. 

You could already hear the low thrum of dread early in that strange election year. Big media outlets were using weak euphemisms like “racially tinged,”  but something about the free-floating vulgarity and cruelty in the political arena felt unnerving and ominous.  And if anyone could give us the right words to frame what was happening, or a guide to navigating what was to come, it would have been Toni Morrison. 

She was in her mid-eighties then, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when she appeared in a wheelchair, but I was.  Yet, the entire room bent towards her, seated at as she was in the center of that magnificent old sanctuary, her face and hair illuminated by the light from the gold leaf columns and doors. 

And then, as she read parts of her novel in that famously soft and whispery voice of hers, we leaned in further.  What a gentle instrument with which to deliver razor-edged truths.

People asked her about politics, race, the singular struggles of Black women, and the burgeoning obsession with that New York showman of a candidate, Donald Trump. That conversation seems so far away now.  But I remembered how Morrison insisted that racism had to be taught:  “Nobody comes out of the womb like that. It has to be learned.” 

In the wake of last week’s racist shooting at a Buffalo supermarket, her words came back to me. I re-read the notes I had taken that night, looking for something, maybe a bit of emotional ballast.   

Every time this kind of horror happens, we are desperate to know who or what taught that young man to hate. How did an 18-year-old learn to be the kind of person who would arm himself like a combat soldier to murder elderly Black women and men as they shopped?  And like all the mass shooters before him, we scrutinized his background, his mental state, and all his grandiose words. If only we could crack the code of evil and identify the necessary ingredients of hate.

But it’s also true that these men have an almost indecent power to hold our attention, and attention is a form of adulation. Morrison had thoughts during that reading about our obsession with the worst of us. “Evil has vivid speech. It has a blockbuster audience,” she said.  But goodness? “Goodness lurks backstage. Goodness bites its tongue.”   

Then she took us to school:

“I always thought that evil, murder, all those things needed a top hat, a drum roll, a tuxedo because, fundamentally, they are not complex or interesting. It is devastating, that is all,” she said.  “I just think goodness is more interesting. It’s more complex, more layered,” she explained. “Evil is constant, it can elevate itself, but it’s all about pain and death. Period. A child can think of different ways to murder people; that’s not interesting. You do have to be an adult to be consciously, deliberately good. That’s complicated. That’s my sermon.” 

As we filed out into the quiet streets, books in hand, we didn’t have any idea that the words and behavior we found shocking in 2016 would be ordinary in a few years.

In reading Morrison’s thoughts on good and evil today, I thought of the ten citizens of Buffalo who were killed last Saturday.  Their first names sound like a poem that speaks of mothers and fathers of different generations: Celestine, Geraldine, Roberta, Ruth, Andre, Kat, Margus, Aaron, Heyward, and Pearl. Their stories were threaded with everyday decency. 

The oldest was 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield, who still visited her husband in a nursing home daily. And the youngest was 32-year-old Roberta (Robbie) Drury, who’d moved to Buffalo to help her brother manage his leukemia care. There was also a beloved deacon, a grandmother who ran a Saturday food pantry, and an activist. These were the kinds of choices they made.

Many of the victims were old enough to have seen segregation and racist redlining, and the constellation of unimaginable barriers that faced their parents. But there they were, in a grocery store they’d fought to bring to that underserved neighborhood, doing the complicated soul-work of not giving up, of pulling themselves toward the light over and over, of creating the tender shelter of community in a harsh, sandpaper world.   

What could we change if we analyzed their goodness as intensely as we do the evil that took them?  Could we identify the alchemy of that kind of resilience? 

I won’t pretend to know how to do that. And we don’t have Toni Morrison to ask. But what struck me in hearing the voices of the Buffalo families was how entwined they seemed to be with their community and how often they spoke of shared burdens. And if, as Morrison said, evil is learned, then good could be taught too.  But what would that look like in practice in a country so large and unevenly resourced?

The subject reminds me of an opinion piece I read about mandatory national service. Theoretically, a program like that would put young Americans of different backgrounds, regions, and economic statuses together for a year to build something functional or beautiful. Collaborating on a real-world project can bond people across cultural divides. Of course, a program like that might be a tad ambitious in our current state of dysfunction. Yet, shutting down every sleazy bit of hate that festers online or in cynical political speech is not realistic either.  

Political analyst and historian Jonathan Alter has said that it’ll take a transformative leader to divert us from this trajectory of extremes.  Maybe someone with the once-in-a-lifetime communication skills of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy.  Someone who can put goodness center stage.

Related:

Why It's So Hard To Pay Attention To Things That Matter

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I got a preview of the annual art extravaganza that is Frieze New York, an event in which dozens of galleries from around the world gather under one roof in Manhattan. The attendee fashion was almost as much fun as the art. But I was really blown away by one of Kathleen Ryan’s sculptures of moldy fruit made out of gemstones. I’d only seen photos of these bejeweled wonders, and in real life, they are everything—mortality, decay, and decadence stitched together.

A little humor and culture recommendations coming separately, till then, here’s a little boost for your week.

Just Beyond Yourself

By David Whyte

Just beyond
yourself.

It's where
you need
to be.

Half a step
into
self-forgetting
and the rest
restored
by what
you'll meet.

Read the rest in THE BELL & THE BLACKBIRD