White extremism and hateful rhetoric were the basis for the killing of three innocent Black people in Jacksonville, Florida.
On Saturday, Jacksonville authorities said a white, 21-year-old shooter armed with an AR-style rifle and Glock handgun opened fire at a Dollar General and killed three Black people. Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said the shooter targeted Black people and had a swastika drawn on his legally purchased rifle. Right before the shooting, authorities said the shooter had gone to the campus of nearby Edward Waters University, the oldest historically Black college in Florida, but was turned away. Who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t been.
This tragedy is just the latest example of how hate is plaguing the United States of America.
It is long overdue for us to sound the alarm.
Back in March, members of a white supremacist group called National Socialist Florida used a laser projector to display white nationalist and anti-LGBTQ images on the side of multiple high-rise buildings in Jacksonville. The group’s leader told NPR that their motive was to garner attention and push their agenda.
It is acts like these that drive the heinous rhetoric that too often ends in violence against innocent people.
Who else is pushing this abhorrent agenda? Political leaders who claim that white extremism doesn’t exist, or who beat around the bush when it comes to calling out the incendiary rhetoric that inflames these events.
Take former Vice President Mike Pence. When he was asked what he and the Republican Party can do to address white supremacy, he said, “There’s no place in America for racially inspired violence, and I condemn what occurred in Jacksonville in the strongest possible terms. That wasn’t a criminal act. That was an act of evil.”
But where was the specific call-out against white extremism? It was nonexistent.
When Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy gave his reaction to the shooting the next day on “Meet the Press,” he actually claimed that racism was dwindling in America and that he didn’t want to add fuel to the fire.
However, his tone was very different two days earlier on the campaign trail in Iowa when he said, “I’m sure the boogeyman white supremacists exist somewhere in America. I have just never met him. Never seen one. Never met one in my life, right? Maybe I will meet a — maybe I will meet a unicorn sooner. And maybe those exist too.”
To be clear, white supremacists exist. They have targeted convenience and grocery stores, schools, places of worship, malls and nightclubs all over the country.
Too many of our political leaders refuse to call out — or even acknowledge — extremist, racist hate and its terrifying, deadly consequences. It is long overdue for us to sound the alarm.
A day after the shooting, President Biden released a statement that said, in part, “We must say clearly and forcefully that white supremacy has no place in America. We must refuse to live in a country where Black families going to the store or Black students going to school live in fear of being gunned down because of the color of their skin. Hate must have no safe harbor. Silence is complicity and we must not remain silent.”
It’s time for everyone to condemn white supremacy without hesitation and make this country a place where everyone — no matter the color of their skin or who they love — feels safe, protected and valued.
This is an adapted excerpt from the August 26 episode of “Symone.” It has been edited for length and clarity.
