Bettmann
/ Bettmann Archive
Originally published on December 22, 2020 3:37 pm
Guns are just about as American as apple pie. To many, especially white folks, they've represented all the highfalutin ideals enshrined in the constitution: independence, self-reliance and the ability to live freely. For Black folks, guns often symbolize all those same things—but, as we like to say on the show, it's complicated.
As we talked about on our latest episode of the pod, firearms have always loomed large in Black people's lives — going all the way back to the days of colonial slavery. Right from the jump, guns were tied up in America's thorny relationship with race; you can actually tell the story of how America's racial order takes shape, in part, by tracing the history of guns in the U.S. and who was allowed to own them.