The Anti-Black History of the Second Amendment with Carol Anderson – Crooked

Best-selling author of White Rage Carol Anderson explores the anti-Black history of the Second Amendment. There is structural racism built into our Bill of Rights! The story of white Americans fear of black Americans with guns starts with the enslaved people who fought against the British and runs all the way to the killing of legal gun owner Philando Castile and beyond. Her new book is The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America.

Transcript

Ana Marie Cox: Hi, Im Ana Marie Cox and welcome to With Friends Like These. I have a special treat this week, Ill be talking to Carol Anderson. Shes a professor at Emory University and a true friend of the pod. Shes the author of, among other things, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide, as well as One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy. Now shes going to talk to us about her new book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America. Its a heavy topic for sure, but I think youll be surprised by how energetic and engaging she is. I am jealous of her students, for sure. So coming right up, Carol Anderson talking about The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America.

Ana Marie Cox: Carol, welcome to the show.

Carol Anderson: Thank you so much for having me.

Ana Marie Cox: Yes, having you back. This is the second time weve had you. Its lovely to have you back.

Carol Anderson: Thank you. And it is great to be back.

Ana Marie Cox: So I guess my first question for you is a really broad one, but Im so curious, just how did you get interested in the subject of the Second Amendment and as it applies to anti-Blackness?

Carol Anderson: You know, my research, the bulk of my research has been about African-Americans rights, their civil rights, their human rights, their citizenship rights. And it was with the killing of Philando Castile in Minnesota, and here you had a Black man who had been pulled over by the police, and following NRA guidelines, he alerts the officer that he has a license to carry a weapon with him. And the police officer begins shooting and kills Philando Castile. So Castile wasnt brandishing the weapon, he wasnt threatening to use it, he was just alerting the officer that he had one so the officer wouldnt be surprised when Philando reached for his I.D. and saw the gun. And he was just gunned down in front of his fiance and in front of her small child. And the NRA went virtually silent on this. I mean, virtually silent. And the NRA doesnt do silence. But there they were, when a Black man is killed for simply having a license to carry a weapon: virtual silence. And journalists were asking, well, dont African-Americans have Second Amendment rights? And I went, oh, that is one I havent explored yet. And because in our current environment, the Second Amendment right is seen as foundational for citizenship, I thought, oh, this will be a really good one to explore. And it sent me hurtling all the way back to the 17th century.

Ana Marie Cox: You know, so when I looked at the title of your book and started reading it, this idea of the Second Amendment and how it intersects with anti-Blackness, I thought I kind of knew what you might mean because Im familiar with, for instance, you know, the gun laws in California having targeted the Black Panthers, right? And Im familiar with how any law that that interferes with any kind of right is always disproportionately applied to Black and brown people, so I have no question that the way the gun laws are applied here disproportionately affect Black and brown people. But what your book does is it shows how the creation of the Second Amendment, like from the beginning, from before there was a Second Amendment, was infused with anti-Blackness,

Carol Anderson: yes, and that was my aha moment in this work, in this research, was seeing how fearful white colonists were of Black people, and how they kept creating the architecture of control: the slave patrols that went into the slave cabins to look for weapons, to look for books, the militia that was there to quell massive slave revolt, to keep Black people from being able to fight for their freedom, and the gun laws, the laws that said that the enslaved as well as free Blacks could not have access to weapons. That kind of fear was just pulsing through. And what I also saw was, again, I go back to your previous question of how we think about the Second Amendment now, part of the way we think about it now is this kind of hallowed ground of the militia as being this incredible force that fought against the British and fought for American liberty and American democracy and wow! And

Ana Marie Cox: Spoiler alert for people that havent read the book: Militias, not so great after all, right?

Carol Anderson: Not so great after all, right. So you have this thing where George Washington is just beside himself because sometimes the militia would show up, sometimes they wouldnt. Sometimes theyd show up and then theyd stop fighting and then they take off running. I mean, its like, how can you have a battle plan when you cannot rely upon your forces to be where theyre supposed to be, where theyre supposed to be there. And so they could not rely upon the militia to take on a professional army.

Ana Marie Cox: Yeah. Lets, lets just stop for a second and want people to drill down on this a bit, because we do have this, especially I think, you know, white Americans have this idea, like, oh, the noble colonists who rebelled, so brave, you know, took up arms against the British and thats why were free today. Again, not so much. Right?

Carol Anderson: Not so much.

Ana Marie Cox: They had trouble rounding up the necessary numbers of white people they would need to fight the British. And because the idea of arming Black people was already, again, pre-Bill of Rights pre-revolution, but in the height of slavery, this ideayou said it in the same breath, books and guns: same kind of weapons in the eyes of white people. So the idea of having Black people help fight the Revolutionary War, which they needed to do, in order to have the numbers right? Was just resisted so heavily.

Carol Anderson: Oh, I mean, so in 1775, they banned Black people from joining the Continental Army, just banned them. But the British are kicking some USDA Grade A prime beef butt, and they cant get enough white men to enlist in the Continental Army. I mean, they are so far below their quota standards for what they need to take on the the most powerful fighting force out there. And so finally, two years later, they relent. So you start seeing in the north where theyre like, OK, fine, we are going to let enslaved men join the Continental Army and were going to promise them their freedom for being able to fight in this army, for being willing to fight in this army. And so you had Black men joining the Continental Army. So it was, it became a fully-integrated army. So you didnt have Black units and white units, you had a fully integrated army. And they fought. There were like 5,000 Black men in this army. And it was it was so incredible, so strong, so powerful, so effective that the British were like, dang, lets go, You know, but with a British accent, I cant do dang in a British accent.

Ana Marie Cox: I wont make you. Well just say, well, I liked it better in your accent, dang, lets just say dang.

Carol Anderson: Thatll work.

Ana Marie Cox: And thats especially interesting because the British were already abolitionists, right?

Carol Anderson: The British were moving toward abolitionism. And one of the things that you saw happening in this war that freaked the colonists out was that the Earl of Dunmore, who was the royal governor of Virginia, had promised the enslaved men who were on the plantations of the rebels, that come fight for the king and you will be free. And whew

Ana Marie Cox: So this raises a question, what would be the deciding factor there? I mean, because, it seems like if youre an enslaved person, the British are there, they havent enslaved you, right? And the Americans are there and you and yours would not be in the colonies were it not for them enslaving your family. So when you choose who to fight for [laughs] what, can you talk about that a little bit? Because theres a part of me that feels like how, why would they trust the Continental Army to let them have their freedom after they fought?

Carol Anderson: Its a great question. And really this was, you see how powerful the quest for freedom is among the enslaved, that theyre like, whos going to offer us our freedom? How do we get free? Because you had had a series of revolts, slave revolts prior to the Revolutionary War. You had had Black folks fleeing, going into Maroon territories where they were setting up their own communities that were in the swamplands to be almost impenetrable to whites so that they could be free. And so this pronouncement from the Earl of Dunmore was like music, music, and tens of thousands fled to the British. Fled to the British.

Ana Marie Cox: Yeah. And you cant blame them. I mean, like as much as the founding myth of America is a part of my upbringing as anyones, that seems like a pretty easy piece of calculus to make right? I mean . . .

Carol Anderson: And you had folks like Benjamin Franklin going: wow, theyre getting ready to turn our Negroes against us, right?

Ana Marie Cox: Well, who did what there, really? You know? Who turned them, I would say. [laughs]

Carol Anderson: And this, this kind of framing, because that framing also is what would continue to feed into the anti-Blackness. That Black people could not be trusted, that, you know, they got the slightest little wink and nod from the British and whew, they took off running in our hour of dire need. But during that war, what you saw was that the Black man who fought in the Continental Army, they had a lower AWOL rate than whites, and they fought for longer periods of time than white men. So but all of that got erased and it was just look at all those Black folks fleeing. See, you cant trust them. Theyre untrustworthy. Theyre no good. Theyre dangerous. Theyre fighting against us.

Ana Marie Cox: For one thing, I also want acknowledge the bravery of anyone whos going to choose to try to escape enslavement and go to fight for the British. Its not just they made a choice, oh, am I going, its not just, oh, am I going to stay here or go fight for them? Its an incredibly risky choice to say Im going to make a, take this incredible risk. Because its not just like who, oh, who am I going to fight for, you know, decision, decisions, Right? Its making this incredibly dangerous choice.

Carol Anderson: Absolutely. And the precarity of Black life is for me, one of the salient points that courses through this book, that Black folks would continue to fight for their freedom, would continue to fight for democracy, would continue to fight for justice. But in that fight, how they fought and what they fought for made them absolutely vulnerable to the violence that would rain down on them, the state violence that would rain down on them, the state-sanctioned violence that would rain down on them. The precarity of Black life courses through this book because it courses through American history.

Ana Marie Cox: So all those thousands of people of enslaved people who chose to join the British were taking, were already taking their lives into their own hands, as it were. I mean, finally being able to take their lives in our own hands rather than someone elses handsbut this incredibly dangerous choice to even try to escape to go fight for the British, what incredible bravery there. And then lets talk about the Black people that fought for the Continental Army, because, dammit, Carol, I dont know. I mean, I assume there have been some writings or narratives from these people where we get some kind of insight into the choices that they made.

Carol Anderson: You know, and, you know, its, there is again, a precariousness there, and so Im going to go to the point after the war where, so they were offered their freedom for fighting, but then you get a court case in Virginia in the early 1800s that says, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. If theyre Black, there is an automatic assumption that they are enslaved and they have to prove otherwise. So think about that, you have fought for this nations freedom and you still have to prove that you are not enslaved.

Ana Marie Cox: Well, thats the story that continues on through today. I mean . . . [laughs]

Carol Anderson: Yeah, you have to prove that you are not dangerous. You have to prove that you did not provoke the violence that came raining down on you. Because as Black is the default threat in American society, that is what has helped feed the sense of precarity, the reality of the precarity of Black life.

Ana Marie Cox: Im going to just try one more time with this choice, so the colonies could not have won the revolution without the Black people that fought on their side.

Carol Anderson: Absolutely.

Ana Marie Cox: And there was no reason for the people who made the choice to fight with the white soldiers of the Continental ArmyI mean, I feel like, what a, to call it a leap of faith is not enough, right? I just, like I said, Im curious, to decide to do that rather than either do nothing, you know, I mean, thats a choice. Its a valid choice because, again, every choice that a Black person made at this point in time is in precarity, right. Like theres no safe choice. To escape is dangerous, to stay is dangerous, to fight for the Continental Army is dangerous. So those that fought for the Continental Army, do we know why?

Carol Anderson: There was a sense that they could be free and there was a sense of the language of democracy, the language of a new kind of regime, that we hold these truths. There was this sense of like freedom, and freedom is a powerful elixir, and the sense that the people who had once held you in bondage, held you and your family in bondage, were saying, Lord, we need you now, God we need you now. We need you now so desperately that if you come fight for us, you will be free.

Ana Marie Cox: Carol, that gives me chills.

Carol Anderson: Yeah, yeah. I mean, when you think about it, that has been the promise and the fight for so long. If you fight in this army, for democracy, for American values, you will be free. And what we know from Black men in the military up for a long, long, long span of time, that was not true.

Ana Marie Cox: And thats the thing that, that, yeah, that gives me like I have a physical reaction to that, the bravery to take that chance, that expression of the highest ideals that the revolution was supposedly fought for, right?

Carol Anderson: Yes. Yes. And you know and, so one of the things that I continue to argue is that our freedom struggles have been on that aspirational plane of what the United States says it is. Not what it actually is, but what it says it is. And that is where you have seen these incredible freedom struggles of people fighting to gain access to those aspirations, to that democracy, to that freedom, to that equality, to that justice.

Ana Marie Cox: Its one of the arguments of the 1619 Project, that its people of color, Black people especially, that have kept America honest, as it were, or tried to, right?

Carol Anderson: Yes, yes. Yes. Whew.

Ana Marie Cox: Tried. And thats the other thing that breaks my heart to hear you articulate this powerful belief that these formerly enslaved people had. They bought our bullshitspeaking as a white person. Right? Like they believed what we were telling them, because on some level its true, right? And then had to have it, as you said, like right after the war, a court case finds youre a slave until you prove youre not. And then after the First World War, those veterans are lynched and tortured and subjugated. And then after the Second World War.

Carol Anderson: Yes!

Ana Marie Cox: And then after, and after Vietnam. I mean like, its just this, and we can argue about whether or not the Vietnam was necessarily fought to uphold American values, but this idea that we will, we willand lets get to the real point of your book, right, the Second Amendmentwe will take up arms. We, the people who were brought to this land in chattel slavery, we will take up the guns that you have given us, we will fight for you. We will not turn them on you [laughs] at least not right now, because youve told us we need to do this. And they keep coming, this, it keeps coming back to that. It keeps coming back to that.

Carol Anderson: Right. And the, we will take up arms, and so part of what we also see in this is the exigencies so that when whites need Black folks to bear arms, then there is a a loosening in that boundary so that during the Revolutionary War, and you couldnt get enough white men to enlist in the Continental Army and the British are like comingI mean, the British are comingand there is this sense, when you think about this, the Americans were traitors to the British crown and we know what happens to traitors. So this is the Oh, my God, we cant get enough white men, what are we going to do in this? And when you think about it as well. In South Carolina, when the British, when the war stiffened up north and the British said, were going to hit the soft underbelly, were going to go south. And so they send basically a doggone near armada of 8,000thousand troops to the south, they hit Georgia. Georgia collapsed like that. General Howe was like, I dont even know what happened. And then the British like, we just whipped your butt, thats what happened. And now theyre going to head toward South Carolina. Theyre coming to Charleston. And George Washington sends his emissary, John Lawrence, a prominent son of South Carolina, to beg the South Carolina government to arm the enslaved because South Carolina had deployed the vast bulk of its white men to control its enslaved population as part of the militia. Right?

Ana Marie Cox: Yes, the militia.

Carol Anderson: The militia. And there were only 750 available white men to take on this mass force coming from the British of 8,000 troops, only 750 white men available. And John Lawrence is like, you dont have enough white men to stop that, so youve got to arm the enslaved. And the response from the South Carolina government was, we are horrified that you would ask us to do something like that. This is alarming. This is appalling. And we dont even know if this is a nation worth fighting for.

Ana Marie Cox: So this gets to the question that that came to me fairly quickly as I was reading the first part of your book. With friends like that [laughs] do enslaved people need enemies? When I mean there is, Im just going, we know how the story ends, right? Eventually, the enslaved people are armed, eventually you and I are here speaking with American accents as fellow citizens of the United States. When I heard the vitriol expressed by Southern colonists still, right, about arming enslaved people, when I heard even, I mean, you know, northerners were not racist, right? I mean, they were still pretty racist.

Read the original here:
The Anti-Black History of the Second Amendment with Carol Anderson - Crooked