Tracey Onyenacho Nicole Cardoza Tracey Onyenacho Nicole Cardoza

Advocate for gun control laws.

According to the Pew Research Center, white men are the largest demographic to own guns at 48 percent, while 24 percent of white women are gun owners (Pew Research Center). Twenty-four percent of non-white men and 16 percent of non-white women own guns. Although many people use guns for safety, white supremacists have increasingly used guns as their new weapon of choice against people of color (The Trace). And these white supremacists are able to get guns easily and legally.

Happy Thursday and welcome back. Over the past ten days, there's been at least seven mass shootings in the U.S. Tracey started this piece before the most recent shooting in Boulder, which only emphasizes the point: we have to take gun control more seriously. Although background checks and extending the waiting period won't solve every mass shooting, they can certainly reduce violence and harm.

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Nicole

TAKE ACTION

GET EDUCATED

By Tracey Onyenacho (she/they)

Many violent acts done by white supremacists are carried out with guns that are easily accessible to them. After many shootings by white supremacists, legislators often draft up bills that they determine will reduce these deadly attacks, ranging from giving more money to police to closing loopholes on background checks. Yet, mass shootings by white supremacists still happen.

According to the Pew Research Center, white men are the largest demographic to own guns at 48 percent, while 24 percent of white women are gun owners (Pew Research Center). Twenty-four percent of non-white men and 16 percent of non-white women own guns. Although many people use guns for safety, white supremacists have increasingly used guns as their new weapon of choice against people of color (The Trace). And these white supremacists are able to get guns easily and legally.

Current gun control laws vary from state to state. However, many gun control laws have federal requirements to prevent everyone from purchasing a gun. One of the most important federal gun control laws is the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Congress.gov). This act prohibits certain folks from purchasing guns, such as those with felony convictions, those who are considered to have a mental health condition, those under 18 years old (with exceptions for a job), and more. 

This Brady Act also requires a background check to be run by the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) if a gun buyer’s basic background check through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System has been flagged. A basic background check through the system can take a few minutes to approve instantly. But for the FBI, a background check may not be conducted in enough time. The legislation allows that if there has been no objection within three days of the FBI background check request, the person can purchase a gun. This does not mean that the background check was completed, only that there was no contest reported by the FBI in that time period. 

More people bought guns last year than ever before, with over 23 million guns sold (CNN). This led to the FBI conducting more background checks than in previous years. This January alone, the FBI conducted over 4.3 million background check requests after many people bought guns in response to the January 6 Capitol riot. Yet, shootings by white supremacists still happen. 

For example, last week, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long shot up three massage parlors and killed eight people, including six Asian American women in Atlanta, after he was able to purchase a gun on the same day (VICE). This was possible due to Georgia’s lack of a waiting period between purchasing a gun and receiving the gun. Waiting periods are meant to prevent a potential gun owner from purchasing a gun to commit shootings out of rash and violent intentions. Waiting periods also give the FBI more time to complete a background check if the federal deadline of three days is not enough.

Now, politicians are trying to pass new legislation through the Senate that will close some loopholes that grant easier access to firearms. Earlier this month, the House passed two bills that will tighten the gun buying process by implementing stricter background checks (New York Times). If passed through the Senate, one law will allow the FBI to have up to 10 days to conduct a proper background check. Another legislation will require private gun sellers to conduct background checks. Private gun sellers are currently not federally required to conduct background checks unless their state requires it. Data from Everytown for Gun Safety found that 1 in 9 potential buyers on Armslist, the largest online gun listing site for private sellers (similar to Craigslist), wouldn’t pass a background check (Everytown for Gun Safety). But loopholes allow them to purchase guns from private sellers without one. These new federal legislations could bring greater restrictions but face significant opposition in the Senate from politicians seeking to strike them out. 


Politicians are also trying to move forward state legislation to prevent impulsive gun purchases by enacting their own waiting periods. Currently, only ten states and the District of Columbia have legally mandated waiting periods before purchasing a gun (Giffords Law Center). Legislators in Georgia are now planning to bring forth legislation that will require a waiting period of five days. Other states are following suit in issuing legislation that will create or extend waiting periods (Associated Press). Although gun control laws may not fully stop mass shootings by white supremacists, politicians hope to bring more restrictions for impulse purchases of guns if passed.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • White men are the largest demographic of gun owners.

  • Federal law requires licensed gun owners to conduct background checks but not private sellers.

  • Only ten states and the District of Columbia have laws that require a waiting period before receiving a gun after its purchase.

RELATED ISSUES

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Tracey Onyenacho Nicole Cardoza Tracey Onyenacho Nicole Cardoza

Divest from whiteness.

Anti-racism education is increasing, especially over the past few years after many protests for Black Lives and an increased visible, physical presence of white supremacists. However, many have questioned the importance and implementation of anti-racism education when it comes to analyzing whiteness or explaining its effect on people of color. In February, a New York City elementary school principal distributed an anti-racism curriculum called “8 White Identities” written by Barnor Hesse, an associate professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University in Illinois. According to a statement from the Department of Education given to the New York Post, the pamphlet was first given by some of the parents to school staff and then distributed by the principal to all the parents as part of the anti-racism education (NYPost).

Happy Friday, and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily! I had this initially scheduled for Monday, but the points in Tracey Onyenacho's article – and the work of Barnor Hesse – are a good compliment to yesterday's newsletter and the latest act of racial violence this week. Yesterday we called for collective accountability. Today is a way to inquire about our place in the ethnography of whiteness defined by Barnor Hesse. It's also an opportunity to learn the difference between identifying as white and whiteness, the system of privileges and power afforded to white people. If this is new terminology for you, I recommend reading more about the related issues linked at the bottom of the email.

Saturday is our weekly Study Hall email. I do my best to respond to questions from the community related to our work to deepen our collective understanding of key topics and current events. Respond to this email to ask a question.

This newsletter is a free resource made possible by our paying subscribers. We'd love you to consider making a one-time or monthly recurring donation on our website. You can also give one-time on PayPal or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza). Thank you for all your support!

Nicole

TAKE ACTION

  • Sign the open letter encouraging Northwestern to support Barnor Hesse during the hate he’s experiencing online due to conservative backlash because of the use of his curriculum in a NYC public school.

  • Reflect on the ways you may have upheld white supremacy or whiteness in your communities and towards other people.

  • Explore the National Museum of African American History & Culture online. Dive deep into the portal “Talking About Race” where it discusses whiteness in greater detail.

  • Examine how these characteristics of white supremacy culture show up in your workplace and in your work behavior.

GET EDUCATED

By Tracey Onyenacho (she/they)

Anti-racism education is increasing, especially over the past few years after many protests for Black Lives and an increased visible, physical presence of white supremacists. However, many have questioned the importance and implementation of anti-racism education when it comes to analyzing whiteness or explaining its effect on people of color. In February, a New York City elementary school principal distributed an anti-racism curriculum called “8 White Identities” written by Barnor Hesse, an associate professor of African American Studies at Northwestern University in Illinois. According to a statement from the Department of Education given to the New York Post, the pamphlet was first given by some of the parents to school staff and then distributed by the principal to all the parents as part of the anti-racism education (NYPost). 

In an image popularized by Slow Factory, a 501c3 public service organization working at the intersection of climate and culture, the 8 White Identities is a scale composed of different white roles ranging from “white abolitionist” to “white supremacist,” that categorizes the different ways whiteness is used among people who identify with it. The curriculum includes a graphic that places the 8 white identities on a meter where “White Supremacist” is placed in red and “White Abolitionist” is placed in green. The meter shows where those who play these roles stand in terms of goodness and badness.

Hesse notes in the curriculum that these identities are not exclusive to white people. For example, the identity “White Benefit” is defined as being “sympathetic to a set of issues but only privately; won’t speak/act in solidarity publicly because benefiting through whiteness in public (some POC [people of color] are in this category as well).” Hesse acknowledges that whiteness can perpetrate all people, even people of color, in a way that advances whiteness and keeps it in power and in legitimacy. 

Many people, including parents of this New York City elementary school, have taken offense to this analysis. It serves as a simplified starting point for white folks who are looking to challenge the ways their whiteness has sustained itself in our current society and reckons with the lack of efforts to make whiteness obsolete. Whiteness, as with race in general, is socially constructed to place boundaries and restrictions on who is in power and who is not (Jeffrey B. Perry). The ever-changing definition of whiteness, including who is allowed to be considered white over time, proves its faultness as a social construct, its impact of social power in determining the effects its boundaries have on groups of people, and their lack of access to benefits solely bestowed on those who are considered white.  

The 8 White Identities examines whiteness not just in relation to other races—which a lot of anti-racism education has done—but it also looks at how whiteness relates to itself. “The White Supremacist” identity is placed as the most dangerous with its actions centered around maintaining white superiority. Most recently, the Capitol riot that happened on January 6 by white supremacists is a clear example of the role of white supremacists in action. They went through great lengths of violence to keep Donald Trump, a notable white supremacist, in power for their own benefit. To learn more, read our article “Confront White Supremacy”.

The curriculum also suggests that white roles that aren’t necessarily white supremacist, such as White Voyeurism, White Privilege, White Benefit, and White Confessional, are still complicit in keeping whiteness in power. These specific roles hold onto their whiteness while condemning it. They deceptively seek validation from people of other races to absolve them from their guilt while welding their whiteness to reap its benefits. This, in and of itself, is an act of violence as the performance of thinking about abolishing whiteness allows these specific identities to not face backlash from white supremacists and people of other races. 

For example, many workplaces that have clear white supremacist cultures have donned the performance of hiring a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion officer to hire more people of color among their mostly white staff while keeping the same racist conditions within their work environments allowing white folks and others to continue to perpetuate racism onto employees of color (BBC). According to Hesse, these white hiring employers are considered to identify as “White Privilege.” 

The protests for Black Lives last summer showed examples of white people playing the role of the “White Confessional” as many marched in the streets and posted black squares on social media to show their accountability to denouncing whiteness publicly (NBC News). Some white folks and people of color played the role of “White Benefit” by privately “checking in” on their friends of color to show false sympathy. Hesse’s scale shows that these gestures from these specific white identities don’t do much if whiteness is not challenged significantly (Vox).

In order to get rid of whiteness and race in general, Hesse suggests that white people must be critical of whiteness (“White Critical”) and become traitors to their own race (“White Traitor”) as starting points to its destruction. According to the graphic, the ultimate goal is to be a “White Abolitionist”, a white person who is invested in “changing institutions, dismantling whiteness, and not allowing whiteness to reassert itself.” Abolition of whiteness and all of its intricate systems are the only way forward to freedom for all people.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Studies and anti-racism education on whiteness is not racist.

  • In order for whiteness and white supremacy to be eradicated, white folks must be invested in abolition of whiteness in all of its forms.

  • White complicity and performance aids in the maintenance of white supremacy and refuses to challenge the nature of whiteness in order to reap its benefits.

RELATED ISSUES

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.

Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza

Read More