Gov. Ron DeSantis and other electeds use racism and culture wars to distract from policy failures, says William Barber.
Federal law enforcement has opened a civil rights investigation into the attack as a possible hate crime and act of domestic violent extremism. This comes as federal data shows hate crimes are on the rise in the United States, that Black people were targeted in half of all the racially motivated hate crimes.
Just last year, a gunman targeting Black people killed 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, the Tops grocery store. In 2021, a gunman killed eight people, including six Asian American women, in Atlanta. The Jacksonville, Florida, shooter reportedly left a suicide note and other writings that laid out his racist ideology.
For more, we’re joined by Bishop William Barber, president and senior lecturer at Repairers of the Breach, founding director of the Center for Public Theology & Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. His newis headlined “The racist murders in Jacksonville didn’t happen in a vacuum. Words came first.
And lastly, I want to put this on the record. It’s not just DeSantis. Down in Florida, he has gotten Black people, certain Black scholars, to join with him and lie about Black history and call for the elimination of courses. He has gotten Black people to join him, some of them to join him in pushing against affirmative action programs. They are just as guilty, as well, because it doesn’t matter what the color of your skin is.
And we must take back the mic, raise up an army of love and truth and light, that will say, “We’re not having it anymore. We’re going to call you to cease, desist, to repent, to confess. And if you won’t, then we’ve got to mobilize and send some people home,” so that they won’t have the power and the mic to continue to do what they’re doing. They may have the same opinion, but they won’t have the power, and the power of the office and the mic, to continue to spew their divisive rhetoric.
But I think Ron DeSantis, in some ways, is more dangerous than Trump because of his background, his education, that he’s been a governor — Trump had never held political office — and that Ron DeSantis is doing all these things as the governor. Right now he’s caught up, you know, in the popularity of Trump among people who are mean and racist. You know, he doesn’t have that kind of play nationally, but he has that kind of play within the party.
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