The two victims of a deadly shooting attack in Winthrop over the weekend — Ramona Cooper, an Air Force veteran, and David Green, a retired State Police trooper — may have been targeted because of their skin color, according to investigators.
Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins identified the shooter as 28-year-old Nathan Allen, whose writings found by investigators contained "anti-Semitic and racist statements against Black individuals."
Allen stole a box truck and crashed it into a building before shooting Cooper and Green, investigators said. At a press conference, Rollins also said Allen walked by several people who were not Black, who were not harmed, according to the Boston Globe.
Revs. Irene Monroe and Emmett G. Price III joined Boston Public Radio to talk through the attack as more becomes known of the shooter.
"I think what we're really seeing is a whitelash," said Monroe. "When you see a kind of brown and Black ascendancy, you begin to see a kind of whitelash."
Monroe drew parallels between the attacks over the weekend in Winthrop to the burning of a predominantly Black church in Springfield the night Barack Obama won the presidential election in 2008.
"Obviously this young man [Allen] feels very unmoored by the changing and shifting demographics of America becoming more multicultural," Monroe said.
Price noted that the shooter, who was shot and killed by police, was allowed to be "made whole" in the media, despite the crimes he's accused of; a Sunday statement by Rollins said Allen had a doctorate, was married and employed, and likely appeared unassuming.
"Even with what Irene is talking about with a whitelash, there's still a sense to normalize him, and make him whole, even when he's done such a despicable act," said Price, adding that Black men accused of even nonviolent crimes or otherwise involved in a police matter are often not afforded that luxury.
"George Floyd could have been a very nice guy, he could have been a great guy. Eric Garner could have been a great guy,” Price said. “The point is they were never given a chance to be whole individuals, they were criminalized."
Rev. Irene Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist, the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail and a visiting researcher in the Religion and Conflict Transformation Program at Boston University School of Theology. Rev. Emmett Price is a executive director of the Institute for the Study of the Black Christian Experience at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Together, they host GBH’s All Rev’d Up podcast.
