The deadly school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has reinvigorated the national debate about gun control. Of course, America has this debate every single time there is a mass shooting but rarely are the voices of young people included—despite the fact that millions of them have grown up with active shooter drills in their schools since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999. This latest iteration of the movement against gun violence has largely been led by and centered on the mainly white student survivors in Parkland. To their credit, they have done quite a bit to bring attention to showing how white privilege impacts the media coverage of their advocacy and that it is black and other students of color who disproportionately experience gun violence. And even still, those voices are being erased from the discussion.
Though 11 percent of the student body at Marjory Stoneman Douglas is black, they find themselves underrepresented and ignored in the media’s coverage of the Never Again movement. But they have plenty to say and all of us should be listening. As Alex Harris in The Miami Herald writes:
Black students gathered in Parkland Wednesday said they felt overlooked and underrepresented by both the media and their peers leading the charge for more gun control. And some of the solutions meant to keep them safer in the wake of a gunman slaughtering 17 of their classmates leave them feeling more afraid than before.
Kai Koerber, a 17-year-old Marjory Stoneman Douglas student, returned to school after the shooting to see his slain classmates’ empty desks turned into memorials — and a campus swarming with police officers. To him, extra cops around doesn’t mean more people to protect him; it means more chances to become a victim of police brutality.
It is critically important that black students are not just included in this conversation but that their voices are centered. In this case, “centering” means that policy decisions and outcomes need to be geared toward keeping the most impacted group safe—with the knowledge that better policies for minority groups end up working to benefit everyone in society. And these policies should be made with input from and in consultation with marginalized groups. It is true that gun violence in America is a phenomenon that occurs regardless of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ability etc. In that way, this should not be a racial issue. But, unfortunately, it is (just like it is also a gender issue).
There are some hard truths that must confronted if we ever want to fix this dangerous and deadly problem and they have to do with systemic inequality and racism. People of color, blacks specifically, are more likely to experience the effects of gun violence—both in terms of police violence and violence that occurs in their communities. So it is imperative that they are heard when they say that more police presence isn’t the answer and that this is an every day issue that keeps them living in fear.
It also means understanding that #NeverAgain also means standing up for black lives and acknowledging that calls for safety and accountability when it comes to gun violence is the very same thing young black activists were doing in Ferguson, Baltimore, Chicago, now Sacramento—all the places that unarmed black people have been killed by police.
The black students at Stoneman Douglas understand very well that with increased police presence in their schools comes the likelihood that they will become potential targets for abuse themselves. And they are not wrong. After all, studies show that black boys and girls routinely receive harsher discipline than their white peers for the exact same misbehavior in schools—beginning in preschool. And school suspensions and arrests often pave the way for the school-to-prison pipeline which also disproportionately targets black kids. So, their concerns about more policing in schools is not simply a case of perception being reality—this is their lived reality, each and every day.
As Harris aptly notes:
Including black students in the gun violence conversation means broadening the topic from mass shootings to police-involved shootings, said Tifanny Burks, a community organizer with Black Lives Matter Alliance Broward, which helped gather the students on Wednesday.
Burks said black students told her the return to a school newly swarming with law enforcement officers was jarring, especially for a generation that grew up in the era of Trayvon Martin and Alton Sterling.
“They were shook. It felt like there was a thousand police there,” she said. “Having all those police there made their school feel like a prison.” [...]
“Is the solution to less gun violence more guns, just with police officers’ names on them?” she said. “We have to have that conversation.”
No matter how many times the NRA and many Republicans say it, the solution to gun violence in America is definitely not more guns. And it is certainly not to assume that good guys with guns will save us all from bad guys with guns. Especially when, for black people, the bad guys can often be indistinguishable from the good guys. After all, the supposed “good guys” in California just shot Stephon Clark multiple times in the back while he was in his grandmother’s backyard holding his cell phone. They shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice while he was playing alone in a park. They shot 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones while she was sleeping on a couch in her grandmother’s house when they raided the wrong apartment. And, sadly, the list goes on.
There isn’t one solution to ending gun violence in America. It’s a problem that has been festering for a long time and has gotten increasingly worse over the last few decades. But there is one solid start we can make. And that begins listening to the voices of black students and other students of color who have the most to lose when gun violence occurs. It also means seeing gun violence and police violence as intertwined. This is what black activists in impoverished communities have been saying for quite some time now. It’s what Black Lives Matter activists were and have been saying. Some folks haven’t been listening. But if they don’t, it’s guaranteed that the violent and toxic gun culture that causes so many lives to be taken in our country each day will only get worse. And that’s not just a problem for black people. It’s truly an American issue.