Three people were senselessly killed at a Dollar General in Jacksonville, FL. At a vigil for the victims, racist Governor Ron DeSantis was booed into silence. I say good for the people there.
Ju’Coby Pittman, a city councilwoman from Jacksonville, tried to calm the crowd down and said that the tragedy that brought them all together wasn’t about political parties today. In what has become quite a popular quote, she said, “A bullet don’t know a party.” I understand why she said this from a political standpoint. These kinds of situations are difficult and people want to remain above the political sparring. Striking the right tone at events like this seems almost impossible and I am somewhat sympathetic. However, we can’t ignore the reality that while bullets may not know a party, a certain party has definitely made it easier for gun violence to occur. That same party has also emboldened violent white supremacists like the Jacksonville shooter. And DeSantis—who is also currently running for president—is a leading figure in that party.
Earlier this year, Governor DeSantis signed a disgusting bill that allows Floridians to carry concealed guns without a permit. The signing was at a private space in his office so it doesn’t seem like he particularly believed that this was a popular thing to do. Specifically, the bill stated that anyone who legally obtained a gun did not have to have training or a background check to carry their concealed guns in public. People were pissed. Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was killed at Parkland, now a gun control advocate, said that this bill “guarantees there will be more Jaimes.” Why do they want it to be so easy to carry guns? Why are permits such a bad thing? The morality of these politicians is severely lacking.
So we know that DeSantis thinks it should be easier to carry guns, not harder. But he also thinks it should be harder to learn about the real history of this country—specifically about the exact sort of ideas that motivated this and so many other shooters. DeSantis is obsessed with being ‘anti-woke’ which means an extreme whitewashing of history. He has made it his mission to make students as ignorant of the horrors perpetrated by white Americans as possible, in an effort to push the “myth of American greatness.” So no, people are not excited to hear his empty statements. Why should he be anything but booed at a vigil for victims of a racist shooting?
Rudolph McKissick is the senior pastor at the Bethel Church in Jacksonville. He provided a blistering critique of DeSantis, telling the AP: “This divide exists because of the ongoing disenfranchisement of Black people and a governor, who is really propelling himself forward through bigoted, racially motivated, misogynistic, xenophobic actions to throw red meat to a Republican base.”
I couldn’t agree more! Republicans push harmful narratives and enact bigoted legislation then come around when events like this happen and pretend to have clean hands. It’s similar to how so many conservatives spew racist crap 364 days of the year and then talk about how great Martin Luther King, Jr. was only on the federal holiday.
Regarding the Jacksonville shooting, Sheriff TK Waters did not tiptoe around any “wait and see” sort of messaging and explicitly said that the shooter “hated Black people.” The man left a manifesto which Waters described as “the diary of a madman.” Propaganda works. Education matters. People like DeSantis seem hellbent on promoting the idea that racism isn’t real and that white people are the actual victims. Why else would he be obsessed with banning books and “critical race theory” (which he and his ilk have expanded beyond its law school definition to mean basically any acknowledgment that institutional racism exists)?
These ignorant messages carry a lot of power, unfortunately. Republicans are creating deranged individuals who cannot accept that racism was and is real and that white people have carried out tremendous historical atrocities. This makes them feel bad. How sad. You mix these feelings with the prevalence of guns, and we continue to see carnage like what happened in Jacksonville. There aren’t many ways to hold these people accountable for their words and actions but we can still vote. (Although they are, of course, trying their hardest to stop us from doing that.)
The mood in Jacksonville already must be so tense and people are clearly and justifiably hurt and enraged. Booing a monster like Ron DeSantis makes total sense.
(featured image: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
