By Enyichukwu Enemanna
US President Joe Biden has called for immediate halt to racist shootings, saying silence meant complicity.
Biden was meeting with family members of late Martin Luther King at the White House to mark the 60th anniversary of the march where MLK delivered his popular “I Have a Dream” speech in which he called on the US government to guarantee and uphold the rights of Black people.
At the meeting on Monday, Biden condemned racial injustice days after a racially motivated attack in which three Black people were killed in the US.
Biden said at the meeting which also had civil rights advocates in attendance that they “can’t let hate prevail, and it’s on the rise.”
He called for an end to the type of “hate-fueled violence” that authorities said motivated a white man to fatally shoot three Black people at a Florida store at the weekend.
The shooter, a 21-year-old white man, wore a mask as he opened fire at Black people at a Dollar General store in what authorities said was a hate crime.
Police said the shooter, who had also posted racist writings, killed himself after the action.
Biden said they could stop hatred by “talking directly to the American people because I think the vast majority of the American people agree with this table,” referring to the civil rights advocates in the room.
US Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black person elected vice president, was also at the meeting and said Americans had more in common than what divided them.
“Yet there are those who are intentionally trying to divide us as a nation and I believe each of us has a duty, a duty to not allow factions to sever our unity,” she said.
King’s son lamented the state of racial affairs in the US, saying, “we are at a very challenging and difficult time.”
