Ja Morant plays basketball in Tennessee, an "open carry" state with lose firearm regulations. But the issue of Black people carrying guns is not one of strict legality. Racism is also the issue.
National Basketball Association (NBA) Commissioner Adam Silver has suspended Memphis Grizzlies all-star Ja Morant for twenty-five games for “reckless conduct.” Morant’s sin was being seen on multiple occasions with a gun while in a club and via his own Instagram social media account. While what he did is not illegal in the state of Tennessee, that is not the authority under which this penalty comes. The NBA Players Association collectively bargained to give the league a great deal of latitude to discipline players for conduct “unfavorable” to the league. This is a dog whistle clause that really means the conduct scared the hell out of the predominant white fan base.
The usual suspects of superficial reactions have accompanied this episode such as “He isn’t being a good role model for the youth” to “He is stupid” to “He needs counseling.”
None of these are my primary reaction to this controversy. What strikes me most about this is how many people lose their minds when Black folks are linked to guns.
There is a reason for this on both sides of the gun control debate that merge the two positions in that both are historically rooted in Anti-Blackness. The first being the second amendment which guarantees the right to bear arms. But according to historian and author Dr. Carol Anderson, the amendment’s primary purpose was to ensure that militias were empowered to put down slave revolts. She makes the case clearly in her recent book, “The Second: Race and Guns in Fatally Unequal America.” The Second — Carol Anderson (professorcarolanderson.org). She says, “it was designed and has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable.” She continues that even after the Civil War ended, many southern states banned Black citizens from owning weapons. Her inspiration for the book was the killing of Black motorist Philando Castile in Minnesota in 2016 by a suburban police officer after a traffic stop. Castile even declared that he was licensed to carry a weapon following the guidelines of the National Rifle Association (NRA). The law did not save him because it was not intended for Black people.
The other commonly held position is that of gun control. That too has its historical roots in anti-Blackness. In the face of police brutality with impunity, the Oakland based Black Panther Party decided to “police the police” with guns within the law at that time. Co-Founder Huey P. Newton was a law student at the time and carefully studied what was and was not permitted. This effort culminated on May 2nd, 1967, when the Black Panther Party entered the California state capitol in Sacramento with guns! The reaction was the Mulford Act which drastically regulated guns in the state. It is the only gun control law supported by the reactionary right to include the NRA and was signed into law by then governor and eventual Republican president Ronald Reagan.
This is not to give Ja Morant, who at the very least is immature, a pass. But perspective is necessary. No one who looks like him is going into churches, synagogues, grocery stores or schools and shooting people. I seriously doubt that those who engage in this are even remotely influenced by him.
Nothing in this critique says that gun violence is not a problem. It absolutely is. But the effort to silo this type of violence, historically and to the present day, from the violence inherent in the founding and maintaining of this settler colonial project called the United States of America, is counter to any serious effort to address such violence. Even common calls to ban assault weapons, though understandable on one level, will do little more than what Prohibition did for alcohol: which is to merely create an underground economy in which those who can pay will still secure the weapons of choice.
Serious anti-violence efforts should include resistance to the proposed police training facility in Atlanta commonly called, “Cop City” which has already killed a citizen before it has even opened and is backed by the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks owner Arthur Blank. If completed, it will be duplicated all around the country and will further codify the militarization of local police. This will be the source of much more violence than anything Ja Morant has or will do. Yet, Blank has gone unquestioned. Those efforts should also include the dismantling of the US Imperialist military industrial complex which has produced some eight hundred bases all around the world to serve as intentional provocative tools demonstrated clearly leading up to the current conflict in Ukraine.
The next mass shooting as well as other gun related violence will have occurred with or without the suspension of Ja Morant. A society founded by the barrel of a gun to displace the Native populations and enslave Africans can only be maintained by the same means. Until that reality is confronted through a revolutionary decolonization process, very little meaningful change will occur.
Gus Griffin is a DC area based independent sportswriter, a member of the Black Alliance for Peace Africa Team and the Ujima People’s Progress Party.
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