Should be talking about now with all the Voter Suppression and all the statewide initiatives to limit access but today were going to be talking about professor andersons new book the second which is about the Second Amendment and were going to dive right into it. Welcome and thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me, jeff. Whats interesting when i first saw this book about the scope that you cover here. I think a lot of times we think about the Second Amendment in very contemporary terms arguments we may be having all the National Rifle association were School Violence or those contemporary problems. But this book takes us in the way back machine centuries into the this was the killing of Philando Castille because here you had a black man that was pulled over by police and he said officer, i have a licensed weapon. He kills Philando Castille so hes gone down simply because he has a license. Was anything that was careless but the guy. The hand or a website that struck me the virtual silence of the nra. And you have this journalist saying Second Amendment right. My Research Covers the civil and human rights of African Americans. Im looking at what i call fractured citizenship and this was a lesson i have not explored. So i went back and i ended up in the 17th century. In 17th century virginia and south carolina, looking at the slaveholding laws that really dealt with the fear that the whitecollar colonists had of black people and the fear of beingenslaved , the fear of uprising and the law and the architecture put in place to deal with that fear. To provide security against a slave revolt. Security for that White Community. That for me becomes the genesis of the Second Amendment. That fear of black people. Bringing up that idea of the white base fear of slavery. Which there were some and its kind of this thing that i hadnt ever thought about in the way that you made me think of it in the book which was we created this problem by creating this infrastructure of the slavery industrial complex, thinking this time it wastruly an industry. And then even people that i think started to think differently about it, some of someone like Thomas Jefferson for example. Understood the irony within this injustice but knew that if you can wait another way cause problems and they kind of themselves into this quarter where now they are scared of the problem that they created. I hadnt ever wanted in those terms. That that fear may have impeded even the people that have some reservations about the general concept of slavery but like hey, we cant give those people guns because im not afraid we will get retribution so talk about that a little bitmore. So you had the kind of skittishness in some of the colonists who were look at slavery and said this is an abomination but you have those like jefferson who said i fear that god is just. And the rest of that quote is basically he will come back and get us for this. But theres nothing we can do about it. So that kicking the can down the street. Being unwilling to dismantle slavery, being unwilling to even conceptualize what freedom would look like black people. And afraid that the language of freedom, of democracy, of equality was coursing through that era would somehow move, would be permeable and move outside of the white confines and internet enslaved community that black community would get the wrong ideas in their head. But that Community Already knew what freedom was new that what they were having wasnt it. Was part of the anxiety, they asked, the fear that was coursing through that you had these theories of slave revolt and a series of attempted slave revolts, plan slave revolts and with each one the response was not slavery is wrong. Instead the response was we need to double down. And so this is where you see tighter and tighter laws about access to guns. Access to weapons, access to books. Access to literacy. This is where you see the rise of the architecture of the slave roles and the militia designed to keep that inslave population under control. So the doubling down in fact then provides a level of legitimacy for what is an illegitimate enterprise. So what often goes unspoken with Second Amendment advocates is that second part about the wellregulated militia. Having studied it for so long for people that may not fully understand the breadth of the amendment, talk about what they meant or at least possibly intended by that wellregulated militia. The right to bayer arms and a wellregulated militia. Let me back up and deal with the narratives that we currently have which is that these militias are these heroic folks who fended off the british. They are there to fight back against domestic tyranny and a foreign invasion. And they were the bedrock of saving america for the creation of america so this thing is throttled in the flag. During the war for independence the militiacould not be accountable. Sometimes they would show up, sometimes they wouldnt. Sometimes they would fight, sometimes they wouldnt. George washington would be beside himself at how unreliable the militia was. Governor morris of new york said to rely upon the militia for a rachel of foreign invasion, to come against a professional army is like relying on a broken read. So they knew at the time that militia was no match for a fullblown professional army. We also get that domestic tyranny piece. But here you have a government that you had shays rebellion that happens right before the constitutional convention. And shays rebellion, the white men who were attacking the massachusetts government over taxation and seizure of property for nonpayment of taxes. And the militia were putting them down. In fact members of the militia were joining shays rebellion and it required merchants who had to pay for a mercenary army to put down shays rebellion so what they knew at the time was you couldnt count on that militia to fight against domestic tyranny. Instead what they would do was they would attack the government that was just trying to do government functions. What the militia were really good at work putting down slave results. And thats the language that you see happening there with that wellregulated militia. It was, we do not want in virginia Patrick Finley and george are going to tell with analysts and James Madison will militia under the federal government. And mason and henry were like, we will be left if there is a slave revolt we will be left defenseless and you know that the north has slavery because that meant those mania not be counted upon to both defend the militias down to virginia if there was a slave hold and they wanted protection. They had been very clear that they wanted protection. And just like in the debate over the constitution, they were willing to play a game of hardball. When we were kids we used to call playing a game of chicken. Where you could see who was going to die and was going to blink, who thought their life was more important and so they were willing to play a game of chicken with the United States of america and the constitution. In order to get the militia protection that they wanted. So that wellregulated militia was about having a force powerful enough to quell a slave revolt. To bring things up to the current day a little bit , when we were having the commemoration of the lack of wall street massacre of 1921, there were a lot of Different Things that happened around that and one of the things was a Second Amendment gun owners march on greenwood and that part of town that was black a gun owners andwhen it was announced a few weeks before that , of course it caused some consternation amongst the White Community. Here you can see if you wanted to go anywhere that was horrifically toxic you would go to any local news station, social media and see the cesspool of comments and things like that but of course we have things like that here all the time. We have gun shows, we have Second Amendment marches, the nra. What was new about it of course was the color of the people whoare taking in the march. There was even questions about what they get the permits and all kinds of silly things. Eventually it ends up happening and its totally peaceful but you could hear local Business Owners kind of saying should i close my business, things that people would not say otherwise so thats just two weeks ago. A week and ahalf ago. And then its rooted in this problem thats just been there originally so think about that, but you have to say about Something Like that happening in 2021 im not surprised thats what im laying out in this book. Thats the antiblackness which i define as the captain of black people is dangerous. The casting of black people as a threat to the White Community, the casting of African Americans as a constant. That courses through our history. So as you know i track this from the 17th century all the way up to the 21st century so the response of black gun ownership, the response to black militia is not as surprising in the 21st century. Its one of the things that we said when with the insurrection at the capital, on january 6. That if that had been a group of lack folks storming the capital, it would have been a massacre. So part of what im doing with this book is to make legible the things that we know would happen. Because of the culture of ethos that is here that black is dangerous. It is what led to Kyle Rittenhouse who was the white teenager who went up to kenosha wisconsin and was welcomed by the police as he was carrying an ar 15. And shoots three men, killing two of them, seriously wounding one. Walks back with his hands up and they dont see him as a threat and he goes home. But tony rice, a 12yearold black child is playing alone in the park with a toy gun and granted the toy didnt have the orange thing on it but ohio is an open carry state. So hes in the field billion by himself. He was not a threat. Within two seconds he is gunned down. Within two seconds of the Police Officers arrival he is gunned down. Black red. So once what you saw happening in tulsa was on my guy, black folks carrying guns. Should i close my business . So what are we going to do. That is standard and think about the tripwire for thats also race massacres in the first place. It was black men coming to where dick wilden was being held to try to make sure justice happened. And that young man was not going to be lynched. So when they came to the courthouse on it infuriated that white mob. It was like how dare you. How dare you believe that you have the right to bear arms. That you havethe right to challenge us what were going to do. And the result was 35 blocks just wiped out. Hundreds of people killed. Its interesting because as far as we know, on the steps of the courthouse it was a skirmish of someone trying to take someones gun from them that the gun went off supposedly gun played a very much a kind of pivotal role in that, sparking that moment. Youve spoken so much about white rage which is an amazing book and i encourage people to read that and always puts play i think youre saying a much larger picture here, at one point youre writing about but you talk about fear of blackness generally, its such a fascinating concept in the sense of so much of the issues you write about our, they started several hundred years ago and i do wonder if we as a Society Still have this irrational fear of black menfor the most part. Because theres this unconscious sense of we are owed something you like we deserve some kind of retribution because we feel that we know what happened historically. I may not be saying that the right way but maybe you understand where a sense of being aware of what happened were not dealing with but we kind of were scared because we feel like we deserve it in a way. Think about that. One of the things i laid out in the time of enslavement was the fear of retribution. That the enslaved would be so angry at what was being done to them that if they got free, they out White Community. Retribution was just course through the. And one of the other things that i talk about in the framing of the constitution is how the word slavery wasnt mentioned in the constitution but it is there. Just seeping, the words and in the boils of the constitution. One of the men said you know, its not just fear. His guilt. That we are afraid to even let that word slavery, the constitution. Theres this recognition you mentioned that i think in the first part of the conversation about the recognition that what is being done to black people is fundamentally a sickly wrong. It gets all this floating around it, justification around it, biblical justification and scientific justification andpolitical and legal justification. All of that edifice is constructed based on what we know is wrong. So when Thomas Jefferson says i fear that god is just, that since retribution is there. Its that theyre going to do to us what we did to them. But when you really look at what the movement for equality is about, it is to be able to live free. It is to be able to live a life. Its not about retribution. It is about being able to have a job and get paid what youre worth. Its about being able to have quality occasion, access quality healthcare, have your full citizenship rights. Once again everybody, the book were speaking about is the second race and guns in a fatally unequal america. Id encourage all of you to get a copy of this book and hopefully discuss it with people in your life but if you have questions for professor anderson please, we will get to some of those in just a minute. Im curious, move on to the kind of 1950s, 1960s rights era. You have these parallel tracks where you can have the more militant wing of it so this would be kind of the malcom x of the world and youd have the kind of nonviolent Martin Luther king cited which was much more braced in a certain sense by the white establishment. You think some of that was really because someone like on the x, especially the early part of his career is literally walking down the street with armed guards. I would take more of an intimidating present luther king junior and how that played into this larger narrative about who gets to be powerful and who gets to have guns and things like that one of the things you have to remember is that this strategy of nonviolence was a way that narrative with of black people as being inherently violent,inherently criminal and it was a way to bring the cameras in. So that america could see how violent jim crow really was. How black people just trying to sit at the lunch counter would bring down condiments all over them. Brutality all over black folks being nonviolent because what that does is it shortcircuits the narrative that well, they had it coming. What did they do . You saw they didnt knowtheir place. You saw that they were being threatening. They were just being black. So the nonviolence was a way to shortcircuit that traditional fallback narrative. And you think about, thats a narrative that were in right now. What did he do . You must have done something to get shot. And with that, the nonviolence in the movement, we also have black folks armed. Like the deacon for defense who was threatening these nonviolent protesters from the violence that was raining down on them. Weve got a narrative of the Civil Rights Movement that is more bifurcated. Then it needs to be. You had the militants. I talk about with the black Panther Party. What the black Panther Party for selfdefense, they arose as a response to the Massive Police brutality that was raining down on black folks. And that there was no accountability within the system to bring these Police Officers to justice. To make that virus stop. That there were killings, there were beatings. There were false arrest, there was just acts of humiliation and degradation and not muslim word out of the Political Legal establishment. So the black Panther Party for selfdefense arose because of that. And one of the things that they did was they knew the law. They knew californias law. And californias law the time allowed open carry. Californias law at the time also allowed for civilians to have to stand a certain distance away from a Police Officer doing his or her duty. So the panthers would stand there with their guns. Openly carrying, watching the police arresting black folks area of the police did not like it. They did not like the policing the police thing at all. So they ran to don mulford who was a california assemblyman and said we need help. Mulford obliged with the mulford act. Which was written with the help of the nra. At band open carry of weapons so it band, it made illegal what the panthers were doing that was legal in order to bring down Police Violence in the black community. And the panthers with their guns sent a shockwave through white america. And this was where you get this narrative. This bifurcated narrative that had Martin Luther king and as nonviolence but remember the violence that the state, remember because what they were doing was disrupting a power structure. That was seen as violent. But it was a way to try and pick these two against each other. King was doing it the right way and the panthers were doing it the wrong way. But when you think about the violence that the Civil Rights Movement faced here in the south, it was seen as doing it the wrong way because they werent being violent and accepting jim crow. Ive had a few conversations with the film judas and the black messiah came out about fred hampton and some of the things around there and its been so interesting that so many young people dont have any real awareness of the black Panther Party. And how much of that conversation, how unique it was in that moment to have Something Like that happen. I think its what dated in peoples minds that that potency of that moment for them to essentially have some popculture things bring that to the forefront. Why do you think the black Panther Party of the bill civil rights and early vietnam era kind of seemed to fade from the National Dialogue and not have the same level of impact . I think it was several things. One is that they got reduced to just guns. And the black Panther Party was about community so they had a free Breakfast Program. They had, they ran medical clinics because these were the things that the community needed inorder to be strong. That Breakfast Program was defined as being a various activity by J Edgar Hoover of the fbi. A net various activity that had to be stopped. The Law Enforcement pressure put on the panthers to define them as illegal and to just crush them was, and to define them as an outlier that they werentmeeting the needs of the community when in fact they were. You think about it hampton. The work that fred hampton was doing in chicago. Working with, trying to work with the black rangers of the largest gang there. To figure out how to turn that gang into a purveyor of something really positive and uplifting in the black community. At the response coming out of the chicago pd and the fbiwas like , we have got to stop that little head from looking hooking upwith that blackbody. So its the counterintelligence program. Its sending information to hampton to jeff for saying got hit out and the other has a hit out for you trying to take you out. To so distrust. And i think that the labeling of the panthers, not as this organization put in place to defend the black community from Police Violence, from the ravages of a system that just extracted resources from that community and put that community inharms way. That you got this sense of lets take them as nefarious and violent and as a threat to the whitecommunity. And that will shrink their base. That will make them not viable. Lets just put the incredible resources of federal Law Enforcement and of state and local Law Enforcement and bear down on this organization until we can cripple them. You mentioned Kyle Rittenhouse a little bit ago and then you think about in the 21st century, which basically began right after columbine, the conversation about guns in america is inextricably linked to massachusetts and specifically School Shootings. Those two things. Theyre still happening regularly unfortunately. I have not seen one that i can remember that was not for the most part a young white disaffected male. And its almost to the point of you can almost guess it before they talk about who did it unfortunately. Its so specific, the person that you would be looking for. If for the last 20 years all these Mass Shootings and all these School Shootings have been done by black men, would we have different gun laws now and mark. Oh yes. The one of the things that i laid out in my piece in the guardian was that we got these twin pandemics inning area the twin pandemics of Mass Shootings, getting up against the pandemic of antiblack that we so stoked the fears along in this nation of black in the state of these Mass Shootings we cannot get a reasonable response, a reasonable gun Safety Response cause weve got this narrative of defenselessness. Its almost like george mason back in the 18th century. If you take our militia, we will be left defenseless against all of these people. You think about the couple in st. Louis, when black flies matter march and they came out of their homes with their guns aimed at these people who did not have weapons. When you think about the language of ron johnson talking about i wasnt afraid about thatinsurrection. Because these were lawabiding people. If that had been black lives matter, that narrative of being left defenseless with gun safety laws. Being left defenseless to black people who were as we get the narrative, because of these on this guns of families that have dealt with gun violence, white families that have dealt with gun violence are in a health group, a support group and the issue of gun safety comes up. They are like no, we dont want any of those lost because they will take our guns and then those folks from st. Louis will come and take everything that we have area thats what youre looking at. How antiblackness shortcircuits common sense. And that it says that we are willing to be unsafe in our schools. We are willing to be unsafe at the Grocery Store we are willing to be unsafe in church. Just so that we can supposedly defend ourselves from this blackboard thats coming to take everything that we have. Is that because its truly impossible to be afraid and fully rational at the same time . How are we ever going to be getting past this if where operating in that space. And whatever the cause was for a large swap of society to have this inherent fear of black men and blackness in that sense or at least fear of giving certain tools or power to black communities, im always like where do we go from here . I dont want to be in total despair is that just a generational thing . How do you teach people not to be afraid of the other . What you can see right now is this backlash against teaching people how not to be afraid. Critical race theory was just outlawed in oklahoma. Critical race theory, the 1619 project is getting banned. So teaching this history about how we got here. Its being banned because that kind of information, that kind of education is seen as destructive and detrimental to the project that is about power. Maintaining power. Not about how to have a healthy, strong, vibrant society. How to have a vibrant, multiethnic, multireligious democracy but its about maintaining power for a small swath of people and being willing to pray onfear. To make that happen. I wonder often if the terminology we use impedes us in a certain sense at a good example would be this. I often wonder that people hear the term White Supremacy for example and the first thing they think about is the ku klux klan like, flags burning or crosses burning and they dont think about it in terms of societal structures. Its very easy to say im not those people. Im not obviously racist in that sense. And its not written even really about you as a person. Its very much about the societal structures we have in place to keep certain people in power. Sometimes i wonderthat we use different language. It creates a barrier where you cant get past that labeling and its Civil Rights Era language were using in the 21st century that may not apply to what were trying to do. The thing that becomes clear is there is no language that the structure will tolerate. Its just the way that the Nonviolent Movement in the Civil Rights Movement is absolutely intolerable to that power structure. Its the way that Colin Catholic kneeling was intolerable as a means of protest. It is the way that saying that slavery is foundational and has to be examined in the way that it has affected our nation. The way it has affected our laws. The way it has affected our religion. The way it has affected our food waste and our politics. To say that no, that never happened is, theres nothing that is acceptable to this power structure because its all seen as an attack and an assault. A threat and so its dealt with that way. One of the things i talk about in white rage is how the they rollback civil rights and one of those keyways was to redefine racism. So racism is the plan. Racism is the cross burning but racism is not the a regularly identifiable black name that doesnt get the job. The redlining. All those things. Thats not that racism. And racism is in this narrative is not a concern that black men are marching with guns just the way white men march with guns. That if youre not afraid of what men marching with guns, whyare you afraid of black men marching with guns . Butthats not seen as racism. Thats just seen as being concerned. Its what happens that antiblackness that im talking about that iscoursing through this history is affecting the way that we live and die in america. We talk about american exceptionalism a lot and its a controversial topic but is one way america is quite exceptional is in our problem with gun violence around the world. The other question or from our viewers is are there any societies the us could use as a model for reform or is the Second Amendment with its unacknowledged racial underpinnings the poison pill in Us Civil Society . Big question. I love that language, the poison pill. I have been likening the Second Amendment to the clock and we need to treat the Second Amendment the way we treated the 3 5 clause as a National Prince embedded in our constitution. Explain what that is for people who may not know. The 3 5 clause was the deal that was cut between northern delegates and southern delegates because the south was afraid it would not have enough congressional representationin the legislature , in the federal legislature to be able to block any kind of antislavery legislation coming through and so they argued strenuously. This was the kind of argument that happened. They argued that their in slave population needed because it has on the same equality as white men. And then the northern delegates said excuse me, im sorry, do you count them for your statelegislature . Do they vote . And they are like no, but we will leave unless we get representation so the 3 5 clause was a compromise where and the language is so opaque in the constitution about how they count for representation. Anybody else, they accounted for 3 5 of your being and that is what gave the south disproportionate power in the u. S. Congress. And so in that you have that 3 5 clause. That is predicated on black inhumanity about not recognizing the basic rights of africanamericans. In the Second Amendment you have an amendment sitting in the bill of rights. In the bill of rights that is about the denial of black peoples rights. So that Second Amendment was the poison pill. I love that language. Is there a nation that we can replicate, that we can model after . What we need to model after our aspirations. When we say we hold these truths, thats what we need to model. We need to model a truly vibrant, multiracial, multireligious democracy and what it looks like, how it operates. That means we removed the antiblackness thats in there. We remove misogyny thats in there. We remove the zeno phobia thats in there. And we really begin to think about this nation has enormous resources. We begin to think about what it takes to be a vibrant nation. Where peoples basic needs are met area thats what we need. Thats what we need to model. We need to model our aspirations. These were notdenying people the right to vote who are eligible citizens. People talk about the pandemic and the fact that it is so widespread now that even with vaccines, the virus will be present around the world and we will basically have to make sure youre staying vaccinated and its where not going to eradicate it anytime soon. I wonderthe same thing with the proliferation of guns in america. There are so many literally physical guns in this country, more than thereare people. Millions of guns that the idea that we would have a Society Without them is i think foolish and irrational. And so when you see laws like you mentioned the california at one point had this open carry law in the early days of the black Panther Party texas is about to or on the verge of passing what they call a traditional carry which basically makes no permits, no license, no registration just anybody and their grandma can carry a gun around. Do you see things like that and go okay, i will say on a further part police union that everybody in texas were against that, and they kind of went up against those power structures but in those things happen, do you feel like well, thats just one more pathway to killing more black men cause theyre going to have the same right to carry guns as everybody else. With this constitutional carry, or legal but theyre going to pay a bigger price. And because black is the default threat so you think about Philando Castille. He had a licensed weapon and he was gunned down because he was a threat. He was dangerous. You, yes. Thats why i have a chapter in the book, how can i be unarmed when it is my blackness that you fear . It is whether your armed or unarmed, black is the danger so its when a black man as the cell phone. These gunned down because they thought he had a weapon. He was carrying a gun with him. We have too many of these distances that put black people in thecrosshairs. Of this violence. Black as the default threat in the society so if you have a gun and automatically threatened. It is this stand your ground law. Stand your ground says anywhere you have a right to be you have a right to defend yourself. And if you feel threatened, if you perceive a threat then you have a right to defend yourself. Well, when black is the perception of threat, anywhere i have a right to be and i am block i can perceived threats and that puts me in the crosshairs. It is how George Zimmerman walked for killing Trayvon Martin who was unarmed. For the crime of wearing a hoodie. Having read your work, what do you see as your overarching thesis for all your Work Together . Obviously youre dealing with race in america but do you see it as your tackling the vote, your tackling like you said white rage. Do you see this as part of a larger mosaic of something youre trying to put together or do you go from issue to issue. It is really part of a larger mosaic. My first book is called i crossed the line, the africanamerican struggle for human rights and there im looking at a broad array of human rights and how africanamericans in the 1940s saw their struggle like the naacp, saw the struggle not as a civil rights issue but a human rights issue. A civil rights issue basically deals with the right to vote. The right to not be illegally searched and sees. The right to not have cruel and you unusualpunishment. But human rights is the right to education. Those rights are the right to housing, the right to employment and they saw this Large Division that what slavery and jim crow had done was to eviscerate thehuman rights of africanamericans. So it was going to take a human rights solution in order to deal with the human rights assault. And the cold war just eviscerated that. It just allowed those rights, the right to healthcare to be labeled as communistic. This is what the soviets want. The right to education, the right to housing. Thats socialism. Thats what the communists say. If youre advocating for that this is in the mccarthy area. You must be a communist led organization. So i am as a scholar i am drawn to understanding the right structure and the fractures that africanamericans have area how, what created those rights figures and what are the strategies that have been deployed to try to overcome the denial of those rights. The fractured citizenship thatafricanamericans have. Before we wrap up here, the book is the second. We have links here, you can buy it quite easily. Its a wonderful book to digest and cant have conversations with your friends and peers and families. Id like to wrap up by talking about what this work does to you in the sense of i read these books but i dont get a sense that you are, youve given up on. There are topics that you can be despondent and totally aimless area i think these problems are too big, i dont know what to do with them but i dont get that sense from youthat you feel like these are rigid and they cant be crossed. How do you maintain a sense of optimism especially when youre going so deep into so many issues that have a lot of darkness to them . I look at the ways that americans have fought back. That there has been this consistent understanding of the horrific visions that black people have had to endure and that there has also been this pushback. This refusal to accept that subjugation coming out of the black community that you have those in the White Community who are also like to know, this is not the america i signed up for. I want to be in a better america. So that might, that struggle has been consistent and thats where the hope is. You think about after the Us Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights act in the 2013 decision and you had this slew of votersuppression lost. They were so intense that in the 2016 election black voter turnout down by seven percent. That would have been enough to go well but no, organizations mobilized. And you saw this massive voter turnout in the midterms and in 2020. Were also seeing like white rage, the policies being pushed back to go no, were not having that. Youre also seeing mobilization so my hope that is folks wont capitulate to my hope is really resting on a history of fighting for democracy. Fighting for a vibrant, real democracy. Thats where my hopes are. Before we let you go, ill tell everybody that professor andersons family is from right here in oklahoma so its a bit of avirtual homecoming. More of the central part of the state around the Oklahoma City area and some of those places but i hope that at some point we will get you to visit here in person and i cant tell you what a powerful experience book was and i wish you the best with. I encourage all you guys to get a copy and read the book and go back. If you havent read white rage or one person, one vote, spend some time with these books and go out and do the hello and welcome everybody welcome to tonights conversation that are here to discuss the new book