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I’m Afraid To Go To The Grocery Store and I’m Being Accused of Being “Hysterical”

Rosalyn Morris
3 min readJun 20, 2022
Photo by Hanson Lu on Unsplash

We all know that on May 14, 2022, there was a mass shooting at Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York by an eighteen-year-old white supremacist. Ten Black people, mostly elderly, were murdered.

I’ve had a problem going into grocery stores since then.

The same thing happened after the mass shooting at the movie theater in Colorado. In 2012, a shooter opened fire at a midnight screening of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises, in Aurora Colorado, killing twelve and injuring 70 others. I no longer go to movie theaters at night, and I never go to blockbusters on their opening weeks. I used to love going to the movies at night — especially when the theater was crowded. I loved the commentary from fellow movie goers and seeing the movie first.

That was somewhat of an easy adjustment.

But it’s hard not to go to the grocery store.

I thought that I was maybe being a little ridiculous, because we can’t always trust our feelings. I was also told that I was being ridiculous and hysterical.

But it seems that grocery stores are, indeed, a hotbed for hate crimes.

According to an NBC News analysis of FBI hate crime data from the last 10 years, more than 160 hate crimes were…

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