In times of tragedy, it’s typical for the community to turn to their leaders for comfort, insight, and accountability. But on Sunday, at a vigil for the victims of racist killings in Jacksonville, Florida Gov. DeSantis was met with boos. 

The public rebuke of DeSantis is the result of his years-long assault on the rights of Black Floridians. It’s been so egregious that in May 2023, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) issued a travel advisory for the State of Florida, in which they said, “Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.” 

DeSantis called the NAACP’s advisory “a joke.” While Florida Senator Rick Scott fired back with an advisory of his own claiming “Florida is openly hostile toward Socialists, Communists, and those that enable them. ”

The consequences of Florida Republicans relentless campaign to erase and devalue Black history and Black lives in Florida were on full display Saturday, August 26, when a white supremacist killed three Black people — 52-year old Angela Michelle Carr, 19-year-old Anolt Joseph Laguerre Jr., and 29-year old Jerrald DeShaun Gallion — in Jacksonville, Florida. 

Before this most recent shooting, states such as Arkansas, Texas, Virginia and Florida have been in what seems like a race to the bottom to see which could implement the most demeaning anti-Black policies in their states. 

In 2022, Florida Republicans passed what has been labeled the “Stop Woke Act.” This law prohibits instructors from discussing certain issues of race in the classroom by either white-washing or censoring the history and life experiences of Black people. This has led to many books that highlight the accomplishments and history of Black Americans to be banned in school districts across the state. 

In January 2023, Florida Republicans led by DeSantis rejected aspects of the A.P. African American Studies curriculum saying it violated state law and lacked educational value. This resulted in the College Board, who designs A.P. curriculum, stripping down its A.P. African American course to fit Florida’s racist benchmarks. In May 2023, DeSantis signed a higher education law to prohibit public colleges and universities from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. 

Florida’s Education Department’s most recent declaration that Black people benefited from slavery because slaves “learned useful skills” has been the most despicable chapter in this sad saga thus far. The decision to include this language was so egregious that U.S. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and U.S. Representative Byron Donald of Florida — both Black Republicans who no one would mistake for civil rights advocates — pushed back against such teachings. 

Scott said, “There is no silver lining [in slavery]… What slavery was really about was separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives. It was just devastating.” Even this minor rebuke caused DeSantis to defend the new slavery standards that are obviously insulting and wrong.

I sincerely hope that a Harvard and Yale graduate like DeSantis doesn’t actually believe such idiotic things. But if he doesn’t hold these racist ideas, then he has made the political calculation that appealing to a base that is hostile towards minorities is more politically expedient than presenting solutions to actual problems that would benefit his state. 

As 2016 Florida Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum said in a debate with DeSantis, “I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.”

In short – the presidential-hopeful is lazy, so he pushes hateful policies and rhetoric that riles up white supremacists, and he doesn’t care about the outcome of his words or actions. Even, it seems, when those words and actions have the predictable consequence of encouraging a white supremacist to kill  three innocent Black people.

The shooter first went to Edwards Waters University, a historically black college in Jacksonville, to possibly carry out this heinous crime, but was turned away by campus security. He then went to a local Dollar General where — using guns covered in swastikas — he killed three people for no other reason than the color of their skin.  

Once you devalue a group of people, you open the door for acts of violence against that group. It is what enslavers did to the enslaved and what segregationists did during Jim Crow. It is what the Nazis did to Jewish people and what we see politicians doing to groups they do not like, today. When you devalue the lives and contributions of people you don’t like simply because they don’t look like you, then you are inviting harm onto that group. 

DeSantis and other Florida Republicans did not pull the trigger that killed those three individuals in Jacksonville, but their rhetoric and policies created an environment that made it possible. There can be no compromise with hate. No conversations with intolerance. No debates with white supremacists. 

This ideology belongs in the dustbin of history, and it is our responsibility as Americans to defeat it in our families, communities, states, and country.