ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — St. Louis County NAACP President John Bowman is angry, sad and fed up.
"We cannot walk outside of our homes, you go to work, do your job, go to the grocery store without being preyed upon simply because of your color?" Bowman asked.
Thirteen people, 11 of whom were Black, were shot in a Buffalo, New York, grocery store Saturday.
"I see young, Black men getting killed for reaching for their driver's license, and here you have these guys they walked him into the imprisonment location, unharmed, unscarred," Bowman said.
The FBI is investigating the mass shooting as a hate crime by the 18-year-old suspect, who allegedly wrote and posted a 180-page document online prior to the attack, that includes ideas from the 'great replacement theory'.
'Great replacement theory' is a conspiracy theory that says there's a plot to diminish the influence of white people.
Believers say this goal is being achieved both through the immigration of nonwhite people into societies that have largely been dominated by white people, as well as through simple demographics, with white people having lower birth rates than other populations.
The conspiracy theory's more racist adherents believe Jews are behind the so-called replacement plan: White nationalists marching at a Charlottesville, Virginia, rally that turned deadly in 2017 chanted “You will not replace us!” and “Jews will not replace us!”
A more mainstream view in the U.S. baselessly suggests Democrats are encouraging immigration from Latin America so more like-minded potential voters replace “traditional” Americans, says Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism.
"You are embracing a concept that the people of color are going to replace the white race, and that is driving a lot of insanity," Bowman said.
"It's based on the idea that whites are under attack, and so there's a white genocide going on," Webster University Professor of Psychology and International Human Rights Linda Woolf said.
Woolf said these motives are often fueled online by groups who share similar interests.
"Organizers of these domestic terrorism cells sit back and they wait for somebody who's feeling really disenfranchised that they can use, and he was used. He fell right into it. He's absolutely responsible for his actions," Woolf said.
Bowman and Woolf agree that stronger regulation on hate groups' rhetoric and common-sense gun laws are necessary.
"Some of the world's worst atrocities were done by people who thought they were doing the right thing, and so he believes he's part of a war, he's a soldier," Bowman said.
"This qualifies as terrorism. So when is America going to start responding to this in the same manner?" Bowman asked.
Of the 13 victims, 10 were killed.
The suspect pleaded not guilty to a first-degree murder charge.
Additional charges are expected.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.