Author Carol Anderson: Anti-Blackness Drives U.S. Gun Culture & Right-Wing Assault on Democracy

to talk more about the debate over gun control Republican attacks on Democracy across the country and much more we're joined by Carol Anderson professor at Emory University author of the second race and guns and a fatally unequal America the paperback edition has just been published she's also the author of one person no vote how voter suppression is destroying our democracy and the book White rage the unspoken truth of art racial divide her new documentary named after a Langston Hughes poem is titled I too welcome back to democracy Now Professor Anderson it's great to have you with us so you have both Justin's the youngest black lawmakers in the Tennessee House of Representatives being reinstated to this Tennessee legislature after leading with Gloria Johnson a protest against guns on the floor of the house after the Nashville school massacre talk about the significance of what's taken place over the last week with the overwhelmingly white legislature expelling these two legislators uh you are seeing a convergence of so many of the multiple streams in American society right there so on one hand what you're seeing is the the the power of gerrymandering to create a legislature that is not representative of the people that is not one person one vote but instead is that extreme partisan gerrymandering so that you have the needs of the people not being able to be addressed by that legislature but you're also seeing is the the power of the youth who are pushing forward for a different vision of America it is a vision that is multi-racial multi-ethnic multilingual Multicultural multi-religious and that Vision scares those who are in those gerrymandered districts scares the bajeebers and that's the scholarly term out of them because it is the a way of being a way of thinking a way of being of recognizing people's Humanity a way of knowing that those are there are resources incredible resources in this nation that should be available to all but instead you've got this hoarding that's happening a hoarding of power a hoarding of a way of of wanting to be able to control and in that control this is why we're also seeing this valorization of the Second Amendment and as I laid out in the book The Second Amendment emerged really fully um out of a concern about black people out of a fear of black people and so this is what the role of the militia was and so yes we hear the thing about domestic tyranny they really weren't good at that we heard this thing about being able to the militia being able to fend off a um a foreign invasion they really weren't good at that but what they were good at was putting down slave revolts and so when you're having the debates about the Second Amendment you're having the battles over the ratification of the Constitution the second amendment was the bribe to the South to not Scuttle the Constitution of the United States in order to have control of that militia to keep the enslaved in check and so this this stream that comes through is what we're consistently seeing is and I think about Charlie Kirk um who said last week um that you know unfortunately they're going to be gun deaths but that's the price you have to pay in order to have the Second Amendment and so what it's saying is because of the inherent fundamental fear of black people in this nation we are willing to be unsafe in our schools in our churches in our grocery stores in our amusement parks on our streets in our parking lots we are willing to be unsafe in order to be able to have the the the access to to Weaponry where we can't even think through it in terms of what is logical what is logical is that weapons of war do not belong in the hands of civilians what is logical is that you have background checks what is logical is that you have red flag laws but all of those because of the gerrymandering that has happened politically and the the barriers that have been put up for access to The Ballot Box you've got a political system that is not responsive to the needs of the people and that is what you saw in Tennessee Professor Anderson I wanted to go to who Justin Jones is one of the two black legislators who are expelled was reinstated on Monday but there still has to be a special election with Untold amount of money having to be spent because of the overwhelmingly white legislature expelling them but Justin Jones before he was elected in November was a well-known activist and one of the things that he did in the last years one of his targets was the bust of the Confederate Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest he wanted it removed from the state capitol now this is very interesting going to who Nathan Bedford was the first Grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan sold slaves in Memphis was in command at The Fort Pillow Massacre Cameron Sexton the Speaker of the House in Tennessee voted against the removal and of course each time Justin Jones speaks he is now calling for him to resign to about the significance of this um this push ultimately of course they did succeed and guns and so part of what you're also seeing here is the the kind of again valorization of those who who were steeped in anti-blackness those who in it and to put that in a public space saying this is this these are our value systems right here that speaks volume it speaks volumes about how intricately woven the anti-blackness is in the the operating code and how you have this this has been a consistent push to to open up this nation to you know so we hold these truths to be self-evident the push that you're seeing what we heard from Justin Jones what we heard from Justin Pearson was to make those truths self-evident and that is to to break apart this notion that you've got um that you would you embrace the Confederacy you embrace the treason of attacking the United States of America you Embrace slave holding and so I think about Tate Reeves um the governor of Mississippi bringing this out as Confederate History Month in in Mississippi the same Mississippi that is is removing the control of the police and of the judicial system from Jackson again it's part and parcel of the same the same pattern part and parcel of the same drive to put black folks back in their place I mean that's what Nathan Bedford force was about black folks thought they could be free black folks can't be free black folks thought that they were equal black folks can't be equal and so when you think about that as the signal as the public-facing signal what it says to the rest of the community is is a is a is a kind of violence of violence on your own Humanity and and this other Vision that the Justins are talking about is a vision that recognizes and Embraces our humanity and that that that finds a way for us to be able to live into that full Humanity not to have this exclusion this control um because part of what you're seeing in these these legislatures is is a drive for control to put all the things back in their place so black folks need to go back in their place women need to go back in their place immigrants need to go back in their place the lgbtq community needs to go back in their place that drive to put things back in their place the push the counterweight has been no no and you heard it when they said no guilty guilty guilty Professor Anderson I want to ask about your new documentary I too I want to play first a clip of the trailer were you taught the Hamburg massacre in school no you looked across the river all you could see is a jungle as African-Americans you got to go find it yourself you got to go research it because you're going to miss it because they're not telling you that's the original cross the bullet holes so you have this church that is providing sanctuary and protection to those who are being chased out of their homes now that is biblical when it happened he hit underneath the streetcar and so you can look underneath the car and see people hitting the street here they're sitting in this circle and they would grab someone and they'd take them over a hill and you'd hear gunshot we have no idea how many black people were murdered some of these records were intentionally not kept and some things have oddly enough Gone Missing [Music] so that is the a clip of the trailer for the new film about you I too you're talking there about the Hamburg Massacre I'm wondering if you can elaborate on that and also the attack on African-American history on American history across this country where you have Missouri the house voting to defund the libraries because if they can't have their Books banned they don't want the libraries open as in Llano Texas they're saying if a judge forces them to put them back just close the libraries you recently wrote a piece in the Washington Post titled Florida's pass paints Ron desantis's war on wokism in a dark light put it all together for us Professor Anderson so a part of this pattern that we're talking about there's also the attack on History the attack on knowledge because of people who knows their history oh then they're thinking in in very new vibrant ways when you know what where you come from when you know the violence that has been rained down on communities it begins to shatter those those very traditional political narratives so one of the things we did in that film was to link the January 6th Insurrection with the coup in Wilmington North Carolina where you had a multi-racial government in the late 1890s that was overthrown by white supremacists where you had black folks slaughtered where you had the the the the the newspaper for the the black newspaper burned down and trashed where in Hamburg you had black the black militia marching on January 4th Down Market Street and you had two white men come up behind them just angry that black men were in uniform and and demanded that that they disband and then demanded that they hand over their guns to them this is a state militia and and when the black soldiers said no they were massacred massacred but when we don't know these histories then we're able to talk about we're able to see American as as white and male uh as patriotism as white and male as as as the folks who are fighting for this country as white and male but what we're really seeing is that you have had black folks believing in America even when America didn't believe in them you had black folks fighting for America when America wouldn't fight for them and you have black folks just just pushing this nation to be stronger to be better to live up to its ideals and that is what you saw in Tennessee in the legislature when the Justin stood up and spoke the truth and Rhonda Santos if you can talk about the significancies not only of course governor of Florida but is probably running for president and he's running on that platform of basically anti-blackness anti-lgbtq and anti-whim anti-woman so you've got him pushing for the six-week abortion ban I believe he signed off on that you had the the scuttling of the African-American studies uh AP course because it lacked educational value um and you had the attack on Disney because Disney said you know lgbtq folk are folk um and that is a radical idea and so you see him attacking attacking attacking because the marginalized apparently in his world view don't have the power to fight back and that platform is so racist homophobic and disgusting and it is part of that that Narrative of trying to bring back control I think about the old Archie Bunker song um the days when men were men and girls were girls and you knew who you were then um wouldn't we like to go back to those great old days again it's hearkening back to a past that wasn't so great because it was violently exclusionary because it undermined democracy and so what we're seeing is a full-blown assault on Democracy we're also seeing that full-blown assault on Democracy by going after the rule of law threatening judges threatening prosecutors who are trying to bring Justice to those who have allegedly broken the law so all of these are factoring in the assault on education The Assault on knowledge The Assault on access to reproductive care The Assault on on on on on the right to vote by raising these barriers and then opening up full-blown access to guns to the violence that those guns bring and to craft it in that language of crime crime crime which has that sub-tone of Blackness Blackness Blackness it's it's it's it's a it's a a formula it's a recipe and it's a it's an authoritarian recipe it is an anti-democratic recipe and it is a recipe that you have young folk pushing back fighting back and and and one of the things that is consistent in American history is that that right-wing authoritarianism is always met with a larger better vision of what America could be and that is what we're seeing right now a battle for that Vision there's the Ron DeSantis vision and then there's the Justin Pearson and Justin Jones vision and finally going back to Justin Pearson and Justin Jones I couldn't help continually this past week of but think of the title of your book one person no vote the issue of gerrymandering all over this country these hyper um uh super majorities in states where actually the state itself is evenly divided but because of gerrymandering and what you have in Tennessee these men it was not only they who were expelled it was all the people who voted for them this wasn't like getting fired from your employment in a store they were elected right and and oddly enough or or ironically enough Tennessee was the site of that massive Supreme Court decision that laid out one person one vote because of the ways that white rural conservative counties had disproportionate power in the state legislature vis-a-vis Nashville and Memphis and because of a series of Supreme Court decisions subsequent Supreme Court decisions particularly Shelby County Beholder in 2013 these states have been able to hyper partisan gerrymander again and this is the result so when you have something like 70 percent or so of of Americans wanting to have sensible gun safety legislation but you have a legislature that is built on Extreme partisan gerrymandering where they appear to be immune from the will of the people you don't you're not getting that kind of legislative response and that is why the bullhorn came up because you had young folk saying to their representatives we need gun safety legislation we do not need to be in a space in our workplace where we are being gunned down and the response from that legislature was they were concerned about their decorum being disrupted because people were responding to the needs of those people to the needs of those young folk who were out in the Halls so extreme partisan gerrymandering is it is so anti-democratic so anti one person one vote and the result is is that you've got a society that believes in Reproductive Rights a society that believes in the right to vote a society that believes in gun safety legislation and you have legislators who aren't responsive to the wants and the needs and the desires of the people well Carol Anderson I want to thank you for being with us we'll continue this discussion Carol Anderson is professor at Emory University in Atlanta author of the second race and guns and a fatally unequal America the paperback edition has just been published also author of one person no vote how voter suppression is destroying our democracy and the book White rage the unspoken truth of our racial divide

Channel: Democracy Now!

Views: 174,265

Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, News, Politics, democracynow, Independent Media, Breaking News, World News

Id: ZcsT9v5ESHE

Length: 20min 46sec (1246 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 13 2023