The horror of racism jolted Queens as residents of the nation’s most ethnically diverse borough gathered to mourn the deaths of nine people gunned down inside a Charleston, S.C. church.
The 21-year-old white man accused of killing the black churchgoers during a Bible study session touched off deep soul-searching in Queens on race.
Several city lawmakers attended a service Saturday at the Greater Allen AME Cathedral in Jamaica, where members of the congregation listened as the Rev. Floyd Flake urged them to rise above hate and heed the message from the victims’ families to forgive the gunman, a self-described racist.
But reflecting the anguish of many in Queens, state Sen. LeRoy Comrie said “I have been struggling with this” and admitted he would not have been so quick to forgive. The Hollis official vowed not to repeat the shooter’s name, which he warned can spawn copycat incidents.
Although some leaders around the country tried to downplay any link between racism and guns, Queens Borough President Melinda Katz held an interfaith prayer vigil in Flushing Meadows Corona Park Monday for the victims of the Charleston massacre and for Gun Violence Awareness Month. The Queen Museum will be lighted in orange, the color associated with the month, until June 30.
And in a sign that the shooting was felt far beyond black and white America, the South Asian group DRUM planned a vigil on how the massacre affected its own immigrant community at Diversity Plaza in Jackson Heights.
As the aftershocks from the shootings ricocheted across Queens, President Obama scheduled a trip to Charleston to give the eulogy for the beloved pastor of the Emanuel Church who was also a state senator.
In his last year and a half in office, Obama is in a unique position to tackle the issue of racial division in this country. As a black man with a white mother who grew up in the white world, he knows prejudice firsthand. The first lady told graduates at Tuskeegee University this spring that the couple had endured discrimination daily throughout their lives.
Obama’s greatest legacy could be leading a dialogue on race and breaking down the barriers to talking about this taboo subject for many Americans. Political correctness doesn’t apply here. We need to be honest about where we stand on race.
Let the president speak about what it means to be black in the 21st century and what can be done to build on the substantial progress that has been made from the Jim Crow era of racial segregation. Here in Queens we are looking for answers.
