With the racist shooting in Jacksonville, Fla., last weekend, killing three Black people before the White gunman turned his weapon on himself, comes the familiar refrains about the kind of hatred and violence we collectively witnessed. There are statements about how “This isn’t who we are” and that “We will not tolerate racism,” and while local and national leaders attempt to say the right things to denounce these acts, there is still a long pattern of their occurrence that leaves these statements feeling hollow.
“I thought racism was behind us, but evidently, it’s not,” Sabrina Rozier said in a story from CNN. Rozier is a grandmother of the 4-year-old daughter of one of the victims, Jerrald Gallion, 29.
Tracie Davis, a Florida state senator representing the area where the shooting happened, told the news outlet that she was “sad to realize we are in 2023 and as a Black person, we are still hunted, because that’s what that was.”
And it continues to be fueled by a White supremacist ideology embedded in our American history and culture. Historian and author Leslie Alexander is a professor at Rutgers University, specializing in early African American and African diaspora history, penning books about Black culture, identity, and political activism, including as a contributing author to “The 1619 Project.” She took some time to talk about the Jacksonville shooting and how the tentacles of White supremacy stretch from this country’s founding to our present day. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity. )
Q: On Aug. 26, a White gunman shot and killed three Black people in Jacksonville, Fla., in a racist attack targeting Black people, before turning the gun on himself. Later, the White House released a statement from President Joe Biden in which he says, “…We must say clearly and forcefully that white supremacy has no place in America.” While I understand the president is denouncing racism and anti-Blackness, my initial thoughts when I read his remarks were that White supremacy clearly has its place here, and it’s one of enduring prominence. In your work as a historian, I want to ask you to help us understand some of the place and role White supremacy has in this country, through that historical lens.
A: I think that’s the problem with President Biden’s comment. I think, what he probably should have said, and what would have been more appropriate, is to say that White supremacy should not have a place in American society, but the reality is that it does, both contemporarily and, of course, historically. This is actually a nation that was founded on the ideology of White supremacy. White supremacy was required in order to justify, initially, the colonization, the attempted genocide, the theft of land from the Indigenous population; then, of course, simultaneously, the enslavement of people of African descent, as well. That history of how the original British colonies, and then, eventually, what became the United States, was founded, is a history that is deeply intertwined with the basic concept of White supremacy. The people who originally established this nation were people who believed themselves, in every way — politically, socially, intellectually, culturally — to be superior to other peoples that they encountered, and in the most devastating ways believed themselves to be superior to the Indigenous population and the African populations. So, this is a country that is founded on land theft, attempted genocide, and enslavement. To deny that history is to deny the very founding of the country.
Q: Right, because when I read that quote, my immediate thought was, ‘Can we talk about Manifest Destiny’?
A: Of course. No, that’s a really important point, right? That the expansion of what becomes the United States really only happens because there is this ideology of Manifest Destiny that quite literally says that White folks were intended, and ordained by God, to populate this nation and to remove all other peoples who are standing in the way of that. Along with that, of course, comes the ideology of bringing slavery along with it.
Q: In the expanded book version of The New York Times Magazine’s “The 1619 Project,” contextualizing the legacy of slavery to what we’re experiencing in the present, you co-authored the chapter titled, “Fear” [with her sister, and author of “The New Jim Crow,” Michelle Alexander]. Can you talk a bit about what this fear is, and how it animates the kind of anti-Black racism we’ve just seen in Jacksonville?
A: One of the big points that we were trying to make, particularly in documenting the early formation of what becomes the United States, is that at the core of kind of a social conflict that emerges between White European settlers and enslaved Africans, is that the White settlers who are taking land and settling in what becomes the United States are keenly aware that slavery is both a social and a moral wrong. They also know that it is a condition to which they do not want to be subjected. In a way, that is what then becomes the whole rhetoric of the American Revolution, that ‘We’re not going to be slaves to Britain’; they’re literally using that language. So, they understand that slavery is not something they want for themselves, and they also understand that it is a moral and political wrong. It does, then, create and foment a level of fear because they know that they have subjected this entire race of people to an immoral and an unfair system, and that they are naturally going to long for freedom and equality, and eventually fight for freedom and equality—their human-born right. So, it obviously then creates this sense of terror, never knowing exactly when a revolt-type of resistance, some form of retaliation, some form of a movement to free themselves from that system, is eventually going to come. The point that they we were making from there, in the chapter, is that it then creates these systems of surveillance, monitoring, and policing where — both in formal ways by colonies and, later, states, but also in informal ways — White vigilantes feel themselves obligated and empowered to be monitoring, policing, and controlling the Black population.
Q: On Tuesday, USA Today reported on how this shooting, and other acts of racist violence, are creating increased fear among Black Americans regarding our safety in just going about our lives. What has your work revealed to you about how this resulting fear shows up in Black communities and how it impacts daily life?
A: I think this is a really important point, that it obviously impacts daily life for Black folks on a regular basis. It’s created a situation in which we wonder, ‘Is it safe to go to the store? Is it safe to let my child walk to school? Is it safe to jog in my neighborhood? Is it safe to go to my local park?’ It creates a form of psychological terror in which people feel unsafe just as they go about their daily lives.
Q: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was booed and told he wasn’t welcome at a vigil for the victims, with remarks about his policies — relaxing the state’s gun laws and limiting the way Black history is taught in the state — contributing to, if not causing, just this type of violence. And, Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon was quoted by the Associated Press, saying, “We must be clear, it was not just racially motivated, it was racist violence that has been perpetuated by rhetoric and policies designed to attack Black people, period.” How does the kind of “anti-woke” political rhetoric and policymaking DeSantis and others engage in, contribute to these perspectives about, and interactions with, Black people?
A: I think the point is that what we saw in the Black community’s justifiable frustration and outrage with DeSantis’ comments, is an understanding that DeSantis seems to lack or deny. When you create policies like the types of policies and practices that he has implemented in Florida — when you, for example, redistrict your state in ways that deny Black people voting rights and voting power; when you implement policies that prevent ideas from circulating and that actually spread false information about the history of enslavement in this country, the history of the contributions that people of African descent have made — you contribute to a climate and culture of White supremacy. That climate and culture, in certain people’s hands, are going to bring the kind of violence and damage that we saw enacted in Jacksonville a few days ago. They are part and parcel of the same culture and climate, and I think that is the real danger.
Q: At the end of your chapter in “The 1619 Project,” you talk about how unless we reject “the types of punitive systems of organized violence that have oppressed and controlled Black people for centuries … we will never achieve a truly inclusive, egalitarian democracy that honors the dignity and value of Black lives.” Where do you see people like the gunmen in Jacksonville or Buffalo fitting into these oppressive systems?
A: I think that White supremacy is an incredibly damaging ideology, not just for Black people, but for White people, as well. We tend to think, largely (and for understandable reasons), about the damage that White supremacy brings to communities of color, but we also have to take a look at how the ideology of White supremacy damages White folks, too. It creates, in their minds, a kind of psychosis that causes them to believe things that are actually not factually correct. That can drive certain people to extreme action, to extreme types of behaviors, like we saw in Jacksonville. Like we’ve seen, unfortunately, numerous times over the past few years. So, I think what we are seeing is actually the tangible manifestation of the damage that White supremacy brings to White folks, at the same time that it also brings those damages to the Black community.
Q: From your perspective, what would a response to this violence look like, that honors the dignity and value of Black lives?
A: I think this is really important. As a general principle, I am a person who believes more in rehabilitation than I do in punitive action, but we obviously have a very long history of White supremacy in this country that we have not been able to legislate our way out of. That we have not been able to kind of morally improve, or morally uplift, our way out of. It suggests to me that we need to take more radical action to stamp out and to actually make clear that if President Biden actually believes, and our political leaders actually believe, that there is no place for White supremacy in this country, then we have to take the kind of actions that send clear and decisive messages that this type of behavior is not going to be tolerated.
