We Cannot Understand Gun Violence without Addressing Hate
For the past several weeks, I’ve taken social media breaks, and checked news sporadically. This body and spirit kept saying REST. I pushed through the guilt and listened.
But last Sunday, August 27 (60th anniversary weekend of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom), I awakened to news which immediately changed the rhythm of my breathing - another mass shooting, this time in Jacksonville, FL inside a Dollar General store. Ryan Palmeter’s horrific determination to decimate the lives of three Black folks - Angela Michelle Carr, 52; A.J. Laguerre Jr., 19; and Jerald De’Shaun Gallion, 29 - for no other reason than their skin color is an exhausting and infuriating cycle.
Many of us are numb, carrying trauma in ways which turn this pain inward, our spirits heavy under the weight of generational terror - whether it comes from the barrel of a gun, or policies which tell us your history “lacks educational value,” (we see you, Governor DeSantis, vehemently upholding a white-washed version of American history which claims “some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught useful skills.”) As if these “skills” justified the birth of the black codes following the Civil War, decades of segregation under Jim Crow laws, and the horror of lynchings, Black bodies swinging from trees as whites in attendance looked on with smug amusement; there were even postcards produced, according to Leigh Raiford, professor of African American Studies at UC Berkeley.
Say Their Names: A.J. Laguerre Jr., Angela Michelle Carr and De’Shaun Gallion
In the days since the shooting, I’ve listened to online clips and read articles, learning more about Angela (a devoted and hard working mother), A.J. (a young man working at Dollar General who recently graduated high school) and Jerald (a committed and loving father).
But there is one arresting sentence, spoken by Jacksonsville resident Rashir Amon-Ra to NBC News, which sits with me, even now: “It makes you wonder, why do they hate us so much?” Our community-wide ache is ever-present, the sting raw.
Jenn, an intersectional activist (one of my dear friends), and I often discuss the normalization of hate, alongside some white folks fleeting involvement with issues of racial justice, and an overall reluctance of people to care about issues which do not directly impact them. Those of us who are deeply concerned about working to end oppression are left with the remnants of lukewarm solidarity and ever-widening indifference. And perhaps, most terrifying of all - the repeated visibility of death; the lives of individuals from communities on the margins reduced to fickle algorithms and hashtag eulogies.
Before Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, he left us with a book which ought to become required reading throughout the U.S. - Chaos or Community: Where Do We Go From Here? His words throughout this text are rarely quoted (especially on his birthday) or discussed, and that is a shame because King challenges America to confront centuries of denial, he writes: “Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance… This is why many liberals have fallen into the trap of seeing integration in merely aesthetic terms, where a token number of Negroes adds color to a white-dominated power structure. They say, “Our union is integrated from top to bottom, we even have one Negro on the executive board”; or “Our neighborhood is making great progress in integrated housing, we now have two Negro families”; or “Our university has no problem with integration, we have one Negro faculty member and even one Negro chairman of a department.”
Satisfaction with surface level shifts did not save us then, and it will not save us now.
We, who live within the margins of race, disability, gender and sexual orientation know navigating the far reaching tentacles of hatred is arduous work. Because, y’all, this hate is everywhere, whether we examine entrenched segregation in American schools today, the rapid spread of book banning aimed at silencing the voices of writers of color and those from the LGBTQ+ community, or the expansive school-to-prison pipeline.
Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), tracked 1, 255 hate and anti-government groups across the nation; SPLC’s hate map allows visitors to its website to “see hate in your state” which shows these hate groups' approximate locations, and comes from years of dedicated monitoring by analysts and researchers, according to SPLC, it is usually published annually. Extremists Files, a database on the website, tracks an array of groups organized by adherence to various ideologies - white supremacy, neo-nazis, neo-confederate, and anti-government general.
“With 109 chapters in 2022, the number of white nationalist groups has stabilized after reaching a historic high of 155 in 2019. The movement has not been able to mobilize grassroots networks to the same degree as during the Trump presidency, but white nationalist rhetoric and policies – including a belief in a so-called “great replacement” of white people, strict opposition to immigration and a belief that national belonging should be determined by race – have become even more deeply embedded the United States’ broader political right,” according to SPLC.
Working for an End to Hate
Hatred is here (and always has been…) - turning away from this realization will not eradicate the spread; it greets us in our social media feeds, screams from viral video clips and within comment sections, then travels into church spaces and pulpits where some ministers proclaim God’s love, but only IF you look, worship, and love like them.
As we sit here, another Ryan Palmeter is being raised; hate is nurtured in the homes of neighbors surrounding us, fed to kids with breakfast and dinner, and then hurled at anyone deemed a dangerous “other.” Are we willing to face that controlling guns will not be enough to curb violence, because those who bow at the altar of division will only seek other ways to fuel destruction? I am not suggesting we do not advocate for an end to gun violence, but rather, we not stop there… that each of us realizes the foundation of what we see in America today is inextricably linked to the normalization of hate.
Poet Gil Scott Heron told us decades ago:
“We have been taken over by the season of ice
Very few people recognize it for what it is
Although they feel uncomfortable
Very few people recognize the fact that somehow the seasons don't change
I mean, you can acclimate it, you can politically acclimate it
You can philosophically acclimate it … - from his song, Winter in America
While I could close by sharing a lengthy list of anti-racist resources (books, podcasts and films, some of which are linked throughout this piece and below), what we must come to see as essential, also, is our personal level of commitment to uprooting toxic hatred wherever it arises - the false ideology of white supremacy, gender-based violence, homophobia, transphobia, and abelism:
What are the ways we can speak up instead of surrendering to silence? Are we willing to embody our beliefs beyond echo chambers? Can we show the folks we are most familiar with - our loved ones and friends - that God’s radical love, justice, and beloved community matter to us more than EVEN their acceptance? Can we embrace discomfort as a bridge towards liberation?
Additional Resources / Information -
We Cry Justice: Reading the Bible with the Poor People’s Campaign
Ax Handle Saturday, August 27, 1960 The Florida Historical Society describes the terrorism: “The violent attack was in response to peaceful lunch counter demonstrations organized by the Jacksonville Youth Council of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The attack began with white people spitting on the protestors and yelling racial slurs at them. When the young demonstrators held their resolve, they were beaten with wooden handles that had not yet had metal ax heads attached…”
Caste: The Origins of our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson
Slavery by Another Name (documentary) You can also check out the book, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II)