Black Male Lives Are Not Disposable: Confronting Gun Violence and Anti-Blackness, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Black Male Lives Are Not Disposable: Confronting Gun Violence & Anti-Blackness

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

August 3, 2026

Gun violence is a national public health crisis, but its burden is not shared equally. Black communities—and Black boys and men, in particular—experience a profoundly disproportionate share of the deaths, injuries, trauma, and grief.

A recent report from the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence
documents the scale of this emergency. In 2024, one in every 143 Black men ages 18 to 24 in Philadelphia was killed or injured in a gun homicide or shooting. In Rochester, New York, the figure was one in 85. In Cincinnati, it was one in 81. Although most shootings are committed by a relatively small number of people, the consequences reverberate across entire families, schools, neighborhoods, and generations.

Black Americans die from gun violence at 2.6 times the rate of white Americans. Nearly 13,600 Black people die from gun violence each year, on average. Most strikingly, although Black boys and men constitute only about 6 percent of the U.S. population, they account for more than half of all U.S. gun-homicide victims.

Among Black men ages 15 to 44, homicide has been the leading cause of death for more than half a century. In the nation’s 20 largest counties, Black males ages 15 to 24 die from gun homicide at nearly 23 times the rate of white males of the same age. In 2024, more Black men ages 15 to 24 died from gun homicides than from unintentional injuries, suicide, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, police shootings, HIV, and numerous other leading causes combined.

These statistics require us to say something plainly: Black male life continues to be treated as disposable.

Gun violence Is also structural violence.

We must reject explanations that portray gun violence as evidence of a defect within Black culture. Violence does not develop in a historical vacuum. It is closely connected to racial segregation, economic abandonment, underfunded schools, limited health care, housing instability, unemployment, and the withdrawal of public and private investment.

Shockingly, according to the Giffords Center report, "One study showed that Black Americans are just as likely to be shot and killed by law enforcement if they are unarmed as white Americans who are armed. 39

Disinvestment is itself a form of symbolic violence. 

Disinvestment helps produce violence, and violence is then used to justify further disinvestment, surveillance, policing, and incarceration. Communities are denied resources, blamed for the consequences, and punished rather than supported.

Anti-Blackness operates through these institutional choices. It shapes whose neighborhoods receive investment, whose trauma receives treatment, whose children are protected, and whose deaths generate sustained public urgency.

The trauma extends beyond those who are shot.

Black boys and men are not only the people most likely to be killed or injured; they are also among those most likely to witness gun violence or live near it. More than half of Black youth in one study lived within a mile of a gun homicide. Children living within several blocks of a shooting were nearly 50 percent more likely to seek emergency mental health care.

Every death affects parents, children, partners, siblings, classmates, and neighbors. Black women and girls frequently carry much of the caregiving and emotional labor that follows, holding families and communities together while managing their own grief.

The rising rate of firearm suicide among Black youth is also alarming. Between 2020 and 2024, firearm-suicide rates increased by 26 percent among Black Americans and by 22 percent among Black people ages 10 to 24.

These figures remind us that Black boys and men must be recognized not only as resilient, but also as vulnerable human beings deserving care, protection, tenderness, and mental health support.

Fighting anti-Blackness across aur communities.

This is not a crisis that Black communities should be expected to solve alone. Anti-Blackness exists across institutions and across racial and ethnic communities, including communities that have themselves experienced racism.

It appears when Black masculinity is equated with criminality, when Black neighborhoods are treated as dangerous and disposable, when racial slurs and stereotypes go unchallenged, and when communities pursue their own advancement by distancing themselves from Black people.

Meaningful Black-Brown and multiracial solidarity requires more than symbolic declarations. It requires confronting anti-Blackness in our homes, organizations, schools, universities, churches, movements, and public policies.

Black boys and men should not have to be perfect, respectable, middle class, academically successful, compliant, or unarmed for their lives to matter. Their humanity is not conditional.

From punishment to prevention and healing.

Evidence-based gun-safety laws—including firearm licensing, waiting periods, and strong public-carry laws—can reduce homicides. These policies must be combined with sustained investments in community-led violence-intervention programs, mental health care, youth employment, quality education, stable housing, mediation, mentorship, and trauma recovery.

We must choose prevention over abandonment, healing over punishment, investment over criminalization, and solidarity over racial division.

Black boys and men deserve to grow older. They deserve safety, opportunity, joy, dignity, and belonging.

Black male lives are not disposable. Our policies, institutions, communities, and collective actions must finally demonstrate that truth.

Reference

https://www.ddtonline.com/communities-crime-local-content/one-year-later-seeking-justice-james

REPORT

Gun Violence in Black Communities
by ALEX NGUYEN & KELLY DRANE 

Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence | APRIL 14, 2026

Introduction
For decades, gun violence has taken a disproportionate and grueling toll on Black communities—leading to tens of thousands of gun deaths and hundreds of thousands of gun injuries. The impact of gun violence on this community is particularly devastating for young Black men. In 2024, one in every 143 Black men ages 18 to 24 in Philadelphia were killed or injured in gun homicides or shootings.1 In Rochester, New York, it was one in 85 young Black men.2 In Cincinnati, it was one in 81 young Black men.3

The vast majority of shootings in these cities—and in similar communities across the country—are perpetrated by a very small number of people.4 But the impacts of this violence are felt across entire communities, contributing to generations of trauma and collective grief that have disproportionately affected Black people.

Importantly, gun violence in Black communities is a direct cause and consequence of systematic, structural disadvantages. Research shows that high rates of gun violence seen today have been forged by past and present racial discrimination, including historic racial segregation and disinvestment.5 As gun violence plagues these communities, it leads to diminished economic opportunities and a lack of investment, creating a vicious cycle.6 This reality provides not only a strong impetus for action, but also a reminder that solutions to this problem must address the underlying inequalities driving gun violence in Black communities.

Trends in Gun Violence

Gun violence touches every community and every racial group in the United States, but none more so than Black communities. In fact, Black Americans die from gun violence at 2.6 times the rate of white Americans.7 On average, nearly 13,600 Black people die from gun violence each year.8

The total gun death rate among Black Americans declined 20% from 2020 to 2024.9 Yet, in recent years, different types of gun deaths among Black Americans have seen different dynamics. For example, the firearm suicide rate for Black people rose 26% between 2020 and 2024.10 However, both the Black firearm homicide rate and the Black unintentional firearm death rate fell over the same time period (28% and 12%, respectively).11 Additionally, police shooting deaths among Black Americans have remained at high levels over the time period.12

Firearm Homicide

The vast majority of gun deaths among Black Americans are gun homicides, and Black Americans make up the majority of gun homicide victims in the US. In fact, 81% of all Black Americans who die from gun violence die by gun homicide.13 Despite the fact that Black boys and men account for just 6% of the total population, they comprise more than half of all gun homicide victims.14

Recently, gun homicide rates across the country have fallen. Between 2020 and 2024, the gun homicide rate among Black people decreased nearly 28%—the second fastest decline among racial and ethnic groups.15 However, gun homicide rates for this population remain higher than rates seen in 2019, before the pandemic, and Black Americans still die from gun homicide at higher rates than any other group.16 Black women also experience higher rates of gun violence than any other group of women. In 2024 alone, the gun homicide rate among Black women was 5.3 times higher than the gun homicide rate among white women.17

The disparities in Black and white homicide rates are particularly stark in large cities and counties. Research suggests that roughly half of all gun homicides take place in just 127 cities,18 driving the elevated rates of homicides in these geographies. In the nation’s 20 largest counties, Black men ages 15 to 24 die from gun homicides at a rate nearly 23 times that of white residents of the same age.19 This disparity means that while roughly five out of every 100,000 young white men in these counties die from gun homicides, nearly eleven in every 10,000 young Black men are killed in such incidents.16

Homicide has been the leading cause of death for Black men ages 15 to 44 for more than half a century.20 More than 87% of homicides in Black communities involve firearms.21 These disparities are even more striking for young Black men: gun homicides are the leading cause of death and more than outstrip deaths from other leading causes of death combined.16 In other words, in 2024, more Black men ages 15 to 24 died in gun homicides than from unintentional injuries, suicide, heart disease, cancer, nonfirearm homicides, diabetes, congenital abnormalities, chronic respiratory diseases, police shootings, cerebrovascular diseases, anemias, sepsis, influenza and pneumonia, and HIV combined.16

Gun violence is also the leading cause of death for Black children, in large part because of the severe burden of gun homicides on this population. In fact, while gun violence only recently became the leading cause of death for all children in 2020, gun violence has been the leading cause of death for Black children since 2006.22 Eighty-four percent of gun deaths among Black children are gun homicides, and, in 2024, Black children were 16 times more likely to be killed in a gun homicide than white children.23

The toll of our nation’s gun violence epidemic, however, extends beyond gun deaths and injuries. The high rates of gun violence in Black communities lead to more exposure to gun violence. In fact, Black boys and men not only are the most likely victims of gun violence but also are exposed to gun violence most often.24 For example, more than half of all Black youth in one study lived less than a mile away from a gun homicide.25 These exposures traumatize communities, leading to and exacerbating mental health problems like elevated levels of psychological distress, depression, and suicidal ideation.26 In one study, researchers found that children who lived within a few blocks of a shooting were nearly 50% more likely to seek mental health care at an emergency department.27

While Black male youth are the most likely to experience gun violence and particularly gun homicides, entire communities grieve and mourn losses inflicted by firearm homicide. Black girls and women are often tasked with providing care in the aftermath of loss.28 One scholar describes this as a “living death” or a “…‘second killing’ of Black women and girls who are forced to relive the trauma of vicarious, violent loss at the hands of others.”16

Firearm Suicide

In the US, the vast majority of gun suicide deaths have involved white people: over the last 20 years, in fact, white people have comprised 81% of all suicide deaths.29 However, more recent data suggests a worrying trend. Suicide and gun suicide rates have risen for every racial and ethnic group in recent years, with Black people seeing a more rapid increase in such rates compared to white people. From 2020 to 2024, gun suicide rates increased just 9% for white people, but 26% for Black people.30

Gun suicide increases—and the racial disparities in these increases—are particularly pronounced for Black youth. From 2020 to 2024, the firearm suicide rate for Black people ages 10 to 24 rose 22%.31 During the same period, the firearm suicide rate decreased 2% for 10-to-24-year-olds overall.32 For white youth in this age range during this time, the firearm suicide rate decreased 7%.33

From 2020 to 2024, gun suicide rates increased just nine percent for white people, but 26% for Black people.

On average, more than 3,700 Black Americans die by suicide each year.16 Nearly 3 in 5 (59%) involve firearms.16 However, scholarship suggests that these numbers likely undercount the burden of suicide in this community. Black Americans face numerous barriers to accessing mental health care,34 meaning that medical examiners are less likely to have sufficient data to accurately determine and classify deaths in these communities as suicides.35

Police Shootings

The sharp disparities in gun violence impacting Black Americans also extend to police shootings. One in four fatal police shootings involves a Black victim, though Black Americans make up just 14% of the US population.(In 2024, there were 49,207,745 Black Americans in the US and a total population of 340,110,990. From 2020 to 2024, there were 5,766 fatal police shootings. During that same time period, there were 1,437 Black victims. 36 When compared to all other racial and ethnic groups, Black Americans experience the highest rate of fatal police shootings.37 Police fatally shoot Black Americans at three times the rate they fatally shoot white Americans.38 One study showed that Black Americans are just as likely to be shot and killed by law enforcement if they are unarmed as white Americans who are armed.39

Recent research also suggests that Black–white disparities in police shootings were even more pronounced for nonfatal police shooting injuries.40 For example, researchers found that in Florida, Black people were approximately three times as likely as white people to be fatally shot by police, yet more than five times as likely as white people to be nonfatally shot by police.16

Risk of fatal police shooting if Black

Unarmed black civilians are three times more likely to be shot and killed by police than unarmed white civilians. Importantly, research is clear that these disparities in police shootings are not simply a product of more police contact between Black Americans and police or a product of increased crime in communities of color.41 Rather, police shooting disparities are amplified by residential segregation and the resulting racial biases.42

Police shootings have broad impacts on entire communities, leading to trauma and worsening mental health. One study, in fact, found that a police killing of an unarmed Black person led to a significant increase in the number of poor mental health days for Black people living in proximity to the shooting in the following three months.43 The mental health burden of police shootings in Black communities is estimated to be nearly as large as the mental health burden associated with diabetes in these communities.16

The consequences of police violence, however, extend beyond the shooting itself and its traumatic impact. Research is clear that shootings by police can erode community trust in law enforcement.44 Fractures in police-community trust, in turn, can fuel cycles of community gun homicides and shootings that disproportionately impact Black people.16

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Conclusion

The statistics on gun deaths among Black Americans paint a grim picture, but we should not be resigned that this toll and these disparities are inevitable.

Evidence-based gun safety laws can help address the epidemic of gun violence in Black communities. Recent research has found that specific policies, like waiting periods,45 firearm licensing laws,46 and strong public carry laws16 all reduce homicides in Black communities. Importantly, many of these policies enjoy strong support from Black Americans. A poll of Black Americans and Black gun owners found that these groups support a number of gun safety laws, in many cases at higher rates than white Americans and white gun owners.47

These policy reforms must also be coupled with direct investments in community-led violence intervention programs. Community violence intervention programs engage individuals at highest risk of being victims or perpetrators—or both—of violence through a variety of strategies including building relationships and providing supportive social services, addressing conflict through nonviolent means like de-escalation and mediation, and working to support community healing from violence. At their core, these programs ​​directly invest in communities and the people in them, with many programs helping to address systemic inequalities by meeting the economic, educational, health, and social needs of the participants and their families. Many communities have been employing these strategies for years, but dedicated, stable investments are needed to scale and sustain these programs.

Black communities have disproportionately shouldered our nation’s gun violence epidemic for decades, and will continue to do so unless we take concerted, community-driven steps to address this public health crisis. It is imperative—from an equity perspective, a moral perspective, and a human perspective—that we support these communities in reducing gun violence.

I have covered this issue of the Eyes of Texas song on this blog. I may have missed some earlier news because it really caught me by surprise to read herein that the University of Texas at Austin decided to create a a separate marching band for students who do not want to play “The Eyes of Texas” song. This unmistakably smacks of Plessy v. Ferguson all over again. 

Since we know that Plessy's separate but equal doctrine was unethical, unjust, and humiliating policy, how could anyone fathom this proposed remedy as a solution? In fact, it deepens the wound.

If it helps, I shared Dr. Alberto Martinez's in-depth analysis of "100 Problems in the Eyes of Texas" with my students this semester and they were shocked to learn about the history of this song. No one in my class of 23 students this semester said they felt strongly about the song after learning about it. They even said that they were deeply offended by it.  One student even said that he approached his reading of the analysis in full support of the song, but was convinced after reading Dr. Martinez' analysis that it has to go. 

I have had conversations in my class with students for years, but never had any data or evidence to substantiate the sentiments that students felt and shared about the song. It also felt taboo to even raise as a concern in polite company. Notwithstanding its iconic status, now the veil is off. 

Here are the pieces I've posted to this blog on the matter:

Austin students, alumni groups denounce use of ‘Eyes of Texas’ and demand its retirement

True Origins of ‘The Eyes of Texas’

University of Texas Faces New Outcry Over Old Song With Minstrel Roots

Alberto Martinez, Homer Rainey, Ronnie Dugger and Truth Setting Us Free at Last at UT Austin

For the record, it not only offends many African Americans and the NAACP. If you go through the "100 Problems," you'll see that it similarly offends a broad swath of folks, including many women who find the song's words "creepy," such that appeals to its removal should be taken seriously.

-Angela Valenzuela

Texas NAACP, students file federal civil rights complaint over UT-Austin’s ‘Eyes of Texas’

The complaint signals a continued desire among some UT-Austin students and alumni to push administrators to discontinue using the song as the university’s alma mater, despite the university’s insistence that it will remain.

BY KATE MCGEE SEPT. 7, 2021

The Texas chapter of the NAACP, along with the civil rights organization’s University of Texas at Austin chapter and a group of anonymous students, has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights alleging UT-Austin is creating a “hostile environment” for Black students by continuing to play the “The Eyes of Texas” alma mater song at university events.

The complaint, filed Friday morning, alleges that Black students have been denied full benefits of Longhorn student life because the song is an official part of the university, “despite its racially offensive origin, context and meaning.” The song premiered at a minstrel show in the early 1900s where students likely wore blackface. Despite pushback, university officials have said they are going to keep the song as their alma mater, concluding in a report issued earlier this year that the song “had no racist intent.”

The complaint, provided to The Texas Tribune by the filers, says the university has failed to respond to racial harassment against Black students and others who oppose the song, violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and argues the university’s decision to create a separate marching band for students who do not want to play “The Eyes of Texas” violates equal protections afforded under the Fourteenth Amendment.

This past spring, the UT-Austin Butler School of Music announced the creation of a new band in which students would not be required to play the song after members of the Longhorn Band refused to play it last fall due to its history and origins. Students in the Longhorn band are required to play the song.

UT-Austin did not respond to a request for comment. A U.S. Department of Education spokesperson said it does not acknowledge complaints unless they have been accepted for investigation. The department updates its list of investigations on a monthly basis.

This latest move by the local NAACP chapters came one day before the start of the football season. The Longhorn Band plays the song, and those games have been where much of the controversy surrounding the song played out. A little over a year ago, a group of UT football players called for the school to discontinue using the song. The debate touched many parts of the university community, from athletics and academics to fundraising and student organizations. On Saturday, the band played the song and players stayed on the field for the postgame singalong tradition without a major issue. Football coach Steve Sarkisian said in January that “‘The Eyes of Texas’ is our school song. We’re going to sing that song. We’re going to sing that proudly.”

But the complaint signals the continued desire among some students and alumni beyond the football stadium to push administrators to discontinue using the song as UT-Austin’s alma mater, despite the university’s insistence that it will remain. Last month, a group of students protested the song at an event welcoming new students to campus for the fall semester. Some students also staged a walkout at graduation last spring when the song played.

Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas NAACP, said the groups initially tried to work with university leaders to get them to do away with the song, but were unsuccessful. They decided to file the complaint because students said the campus climate surrounding the song had gotten increasingly tense throughout the spring semester. Al-Nasser Lawal, a UT-Austin senior and president of the UT-Austin chapter of the NAACP, said Black student groups also met with administrators to discuss their concerns with the song without success.

“As Black students, we kind of feel as if it’s not like our voices are heard,” Lawal said in an interview. “The main objective of the administration and the campus is just to appease their wealthy donors so that they can continue to get that funding, and that they don’t really have our best interests at heart.”

They argue the song is unavoidable as it is sung after sporting events, at graduation and from the UT Tower bells every evening.

Bledsoe said students involved chose to remain anonymous because they feared retaliation by the university.

The complaint targets UT-Austin as well as some unnamed university alumni, arguing that while alumni do not receive federal funding, “actions of certain University alumni may be attributable to the University because the University has a duty to protect students and provide them a safe and non-threatening and non-discriminatory educational environment.”

It also quotes five anonymous students who shared various experiences where they felt ostracized or mistreated due to their opposition to the song.

Leaders of the NAACP chapters said they felt the decision to create two bands was the most egregious example of discrimination, harkening back to the 1950 Sweatt vs. Painter case in which the state created a separate law school for Black students instead of granting a Black applicant, Heman Sweatt, admission into UT Law. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled against UT-Austin because of the differences between the law school for white students, which had more professors, a larger law library and better facilities than the law school created for Black students.

Bledsoe said he believes the new band will not be awarded the same benefits as the long-standing Longhorn Band, which has a rich history and active alumni support base.

The complaint also argues UT-Austin created a hostile environment for campus tour guides who called for the university to remove a plaque with the song lyrics from the university welcome center. The students went on strike after the university said they understood if students didn’t want to continue to serve as guides based on their feelings about the school song.

UT-Austin announced last month it will remove the lyrics, but the complaint argues the university did nothing to address the financial and emotional harm students endured from that situation.

UT-Austin president Jay Hartzell said last summer the song would stay after a group of football players demanded its removal in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. The president commissioned a group to study the song’s history. The group’s report concluded that the song debuted in a racist setting, but had no racist intent. It also could not find a direct link that showed Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee inspired the phrase “The Eyes of Texas are upon you,” as previously stated by those who opposed the song.

Soon after, a professor at UT-Austin, Alberto Martinez, released his own report on the song’s history that contradicted some of the university's conclusions. The complaint filed Friday accuses the university committee of not fully exploring the song’s history, pointing to Martinez’s report as evidence.

UT-Austin has stood by its own report.

Disclosure: University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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This is a poignant piece on how the current anti-CRT moment is being felt and experience on the ground by African American teachers. It maps on well to many Mexican American teachers' experiences who similarly get into teaching to teach the truth of America's racist past. My colleague, Dr. Keffrelyn Brown's statements on the double-bind that African American teachers experience are most insightful:

“If there’s any conversation around race, the assumption is that Black people will probably be talking about it,” she said. Black teachers aren’t given a space to address important aspects of history without it being seen as largely a personal interest, Brown explained.

It manifests as an extra burden they must bear “just by virtue of who they are and what they are perceived to represent”, she said. And while Black educators have always navigated this conundrum, they are particularly under scrutiny now, at a time when schools interrogating racism is sparking controversy.

“In some cases, what they actually do address in their teaching can be either minimized, or simply written off as bias or personal agendas,” Brown said, and at worst, Black teachers can be labeled ineffective – a pattern found in research on teacher evaluation ratings."

I do hope that school districts, university faculty, educator and administrator associations, civil rights groups, school board associations, as well as broader publics stand up for our teachers and the profession.

All should care, particularly since the kind of knowledge taught in classrooms like these is preparatory for life and careers, as well as for the diverse, multi-ethnic/multi-racial world in which we live.

-Angela Valenzuela

‘These are the facts’: Black educators silenced from teaching America’s racist past

Nelva Williamson at Emancipation Park in Houston. ‘My ancestors matter. I matter. My students matter,’ she said. Photograph: Michael Starghill Jr/The Guardian

As 22 states pass or consider legislation on race and racism discourse in classrooms, some Black teachers are reminded daily that their racial identity is a liability

Melinda D. Anderson

Tue 14 Sep 2021 06.00 EDT

istory teacher Valanna White filed into the auditorium the first week of August for the customary back-to-school all-staff meeting at Walker Valley high school in Cleveland, Tennessee. What she heard shifted her outlook for the coming school year. On 1 July, a new law took effect banning the teaching of critical race theory in Tennessee public schools. White listened intently as a school district official gave a vague overview informing the group that critical race theory was prohibited, though without fully explaining what critical race theory entails. Instead, teachers were told a list of actions – such as discussing racial discrimination – that were forbidden.

White left the meeting confused and frustrated. Tennessee’s academic standards for US history require high school teachers to cover topics including Jim Crow laws, Plessy v Ferguson – the 1896 supreme court case upholding the separate-but-equal doctrine – and the civil rights movement. “I can’t talk about the civil rights movement without talking about Bloody Sunday and the premise behind Bloody Sunday, the premise behind voter suppression,” she said, dreading the repercussions “for just teaching my standards”.

Valanna White, history teacher at Walker Valley high school in Cleveland, Tennessee. Photograph: Lynsey Weatherspoon/The Guardian

As the one Black teacher in a high school of 1,400 students, White felt alienated. Racial discrimination is not an abstract concept to her. Classroom conversations about race and institutional racism were already a delicate dance of carefully chosen words delivered by White to her school’s majority white student body. “No matter what I say, it’s constantly scrutinized or even misconstrued,” she said, adding that students often equate material on race as her opinion, as opposed to factual information. Now teaching a precise accounting of history was going to be not just tricky but professionally risky. “It’s all about interpretation, regardless if I’m presenting facts or not … if they perceive it wrong, I could get in trouble.”

In Tennessee, teachers are now required to avoid materials that state “an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously”. Among the repercussions for violating the new measure are Tennessee districts losing state funding and individual teachers having their licenses revoked or suspended.

I'll repeat again as I often say, "curriculum is the reproduction of consciousness." This is a sobering and troubling read on what is getting taught to many students in many Christian K-12 schools.  

As we know from many years of battle before the Texas State Board of Education—about which I have blogged repeatedly in the context of the battle for Ethnic Studies, a right-wing agenda has similarly held sway in Texas' K-12 standards and text book selection battles. These battles are important and we as a polity need to be more involved, including running for these posts.

-Angela Valenzuela

These Textbooks In Thousands Of K-12 Schools Echo Trump’s Talking Points

Their religion-centered, anti-Democrat, anti-science, anti-multicultural message mirrors the Christian nationalism seen at the U.S. Capitol riot.

By Rebecca Klein | Huffington Post

01/15/2021 09:11 AM ET 

Christian textbooks used in thousands of schools around the country teach that President Barack Obama helped spur destructive Black Lives Matter protests, that the Democrats’ choice of 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton reflected their focus on identity politics, and that President Donald Trump is the “fighter” Republicans want, a HuffPost analysis has found.

The analysis, which focused on three popular textbooks from two major publishers of Christian educational materials ― Abeka and BJU Press ― looked at how the books teach the Trump era of politics. We found that all three are characterized by a skewed version of history and a sense that the country is experiencing an urgent moral decline that can only be fixed by conservative Christian policies. Language used in the books overlaps with the rhetoric of Christian nationalism, often with overtones of nativism, militarism and racism as well.

Scholars say textbooks like these, with their alternate versions of history and emphasis on Christian national identity, represent one small part of the conditions that lead to events like last week’s riot at the U.S. Capitol, an episode that was permeated with the symbols of Christian nationalism. Before storming the Capitol, some groups prayed in the name of Jesus and asked for divine protection. They flew Christian and “Jesus 2020” flags and pointed to Trump’s presidency as the will of God. The linkage between Christian beliefs and the violent attack on Congress has since pushed evangelical leaders to confront their own relationship with Trump and their support for the rioters.

“These textbooks made this brand of nationalism more mainstream,” said Kathleen Wellman, a Southern Methodist University history professor who is working on a book about the two Christian publishers. “I’m struck by how coherent of a worldview [the textbooks] promote and how thoroughly it resonates in current culture.” 

Representatives from BJU Press and Abeka did not respond to inquiries about how many schools use their products. However, a 2017 HuffPost investigation found that about one-third of Christian schools participating in private school choice programs used a curriculum created by these two publishers or a similar company called Accelerated Christian Education, amounting to around 2,400 schools. The number of schools using these company’s products that do not participate in a voucher program likely amounts to thousands more. (Voucher programs allow students to use taxpayer funds to attend private schools.) 

Both Abeka and BJU Press have ties to Christian colleges. Abeka was launched in the 1970s by Arlin and Beka Horton, who also founded Pensacola Christian College, a Florida institution that outlaws dancing and other “satanic practices,” such as astrology. BJU Press is affiliated with the evangelical Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, which famously lost its tax-exempt status after banning interracial dating in the ’80s, a policy it didn’t reverse until 2000.

“We unequivocally condemn any rhetoric that promotes illegal or violent behavior,” Amy Yohe, managing editor of Abeka Publishing, told HuffPost. “One of Abeka’s core goals is to teach constructive citizenship through textbooks that accurately represent the facts of history, enabling students to learn from the life lessons it teaches, both positive and negative.”

BJU Press did not respond to requests for comment.

However, scholars who study religion in America say that many of the ideas present in the publishers’ textbooks overlap with rhetoric heard from the rioters last week. Christian nationalists argue that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and has a special covenant with God, meaning that its citizens must implement a particular vision for this country or they will fall out of favor with God. The textbooks parrot these ideas, said Andrew Whitehead, associate professor of sociology and director of the Association of Religion Data Archives at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

“As we see in these textbooks, they’re afraid of outside forces or the U.S. won’t be what it should be,” said Whitehead. “There’s always a particular prescription ― they have to be on God’s good side. I think that’s a big part of it.”

Passages from the textbooks reflect an overarching worldview in which America is constantly moving away from a moral center, with Christians on the front lines beating back the forces of immorality. 

One passage in an 11th-grade U.S. history textbook from Abeka states, “Although many false philosophies were popular in America before 2000, the new millennium heralded a dramatic acceptance of immoral ideology on a national scale. … Three such philosophies are globalism, environmentalism, and postmodernism.” 

“Believing religion — particularly Christianity — to be divisive, globalists discourage its influence on public life,” it continues.

By parroting such conservative political views under the guise of Christianity, the textbooks give those views more legitimacy, making it difficult to distinguish between fact and opinion. While all textbooks, including the secular, cherry-pick narratives and have their biases, these ones fuse a religious worldview with Trumpian talking points using anti-media and anti-immigrant rhetoric. 

“Obviously it’s too simplistic to say these textbooks are causing people to think something, but they play a unique role in giving visual credibility to these ideas by having them be in a very traditionally trustworthy artifact,” said Adam Laats, professor of history and education at New York state’s Binghamton University. “There’s a sense that they couldn’t put it in a schoolbook if it wasn’t true.”

HuffPost’s previous investigation of these textbooks found that they also dismiss evolution as junk science, characterize Nelson Mandela as a “marxist agitator” who helped drive South Africa to “radical affirmative action,” and suggest that Satan hatched the idea of modern psychology. Many of the schools that use these books also ban LGBTQ students and families, and the books repeatedly condemn homosexuality. At one point in an Abeka textbook, slavery is described in purely economic terms, saying that “slaves seemed to be better investments than indentured servants.”

“I absolutely thought of these textbooks when watching what played out last week,” Wellman said. “It’s the anti-science culture, anti-elite, the identification of Christianity with military culture.”

Trump supporters gather near the east front door of the U.S. Capitol after groups breached the building's security on Jan. 6, 2021. 

(Win McNamee/Getty Images)

When discussing protests against the Iraq War and President George W. Bush’s low approval rating at the time, the Abeka 11th-grade U.S. history book points the finger at the media in part, saying that “much of the war opposition in America was the media, supported by a large number of Hollywood entertainers,” and that “spurred on by the media, many Americans wanted a change from the policies of the previous eight years.”

When discussing President Obama, the textbooks accuse him and his administration of stoking racial divisions. Below is a passage from that Abeka history book:

“Many Americans’ views about race relations had improved at the time that Obama was inaugurated. Unfortunately, Americans’ views of race relations declined after Obama came into office. Race riots in places such as Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, greatly escalated racial tensions and worsened strife between minorities and local police. President Obama’s attempts to resolve these problems often seemed to make the situation worse.” 

The books do not mention that such protests came in response to the deaths of unarmed Black men, including Michael Brown and Freddie Gray Jr., at the hands of police.

A high-school-level textbook from BJU Press also blames the Black Lives Matter movement for racial discord. It says:

“Despite President Obama’s call for racial harmony, his eight-year term of office saw an intensification of racial discord. Several controversial shootings of black men led to protests, some of which were violent and destructive with black communities bearing the brunt of most of the destruction. Groups such as Black Lives Matter sharpened the divide between police and citizens, and black and white, with divisive rhetoric. Mixed messages from the Obama administration, the Department of Justice in particular, seemed to increase the racial discord.”

The textbook does not mention that those “controversial” shootings were at the hands of police officers or explain the societal changes Black Lives Matter is trying to achieve with its supposedly “divisive rhetoric.” The book does not lay out for its teen readers what those “mixed messages” from the Obama administration were. 

Other targets of the textbooks include “globalists,” environmentalists and “multiculturalists.”

“According to multiculturalists, advancing the achievements of western civilization was an act of hatred toward other cultures. They encouraged people to define themselves by race, sex, or sexual orientation rather than by the pillars of western civilization, such as nation, family, and God,” reads the Abeka American history textbook. “However, many conservatives and Christians within America have attempted to quell these philosophies and once again turn America into a united, moral nation.”

The textbooks don’t give a full-throated endorsement of Trump, noting his crude remarks and previously liberal positions, but they ultimately represent him as someone on the side of Christians who is fighting for their values. One description from the Abeka textbook reads:

“Contrary to the high hopes that Obama’s presidency would bring the country together, Americans were bitterly divided leading up to the election in 2016. The Democratic Party had become increasingly concerned with identity politics, which is the idea that a person’s race, sex, and sexual orientation form the most important parts of their humanity and that politics should reflect that belief. Republicans, meanwhile, believed that their politicians had been too compromising with the increasingly radical left and that they needed a political outsider who would not back down or compromise with the Democrats. 

“... The Republican Party nominated real estate mogul and reality television star Donald Trump from New York, whose determination and bombastic mannerisms gave Republicans the fighter they wanted. As a businessman, Trump stated that he would ‘take the brand of the United States and make it great again.’ However, many conservatives were wary of Trump because of his occasional vulgar speech, his past immoral behavior, and his public support of homosexual marriage; but some were persuaded by Trump’s choice for his running mate — Indiana’s conservative governor Mike Pence.” 

Evangelical Christians were one of Trump’s most important voting blocks. Though white evangelicals only represent about 15% of the electorate, they made up about 23% of the vote during the 2020 election, according to the Associated Press. About 8 in 10 white evangelical Christians voted for Trump last year. 

A passage from an Abeka high school history book.

Images from the Capitol riot felt more familiar than shocking to 28-year-old Mel Garman, who grew up attending evangelical Christian schools.

There were the Christian flags, like the ones she used to pledge allegiance to in school, waving alongside American flags. The rioters’ rhetoric, focused around saving the country, defeating enemies and promoting the will of God, could have come straight out of one of her childhood classrooms, where she said she was taught a distorted version of history with nods to white Christian supremacy. Last week’s insurrectionists could have been her classmates, her teachers, her pastors. She felt a wave of recognition as she watched the pictures on social media. 

“Over the course of my life I can see how what I was taught in Christian schooling has impacted me, and the riots on Jan. 6 played into it. That whole belief system revolves around the idea that you want the rest of the world to think like you,” said Garman, who is now a social worker. “It’s a ‘the ends justify the means’ type of thing.”

Since Jan. 6, popular pro-Trump evangelical leaders have felt driven to judge the rioters’ actions, with some offering full-throttle condemnations and others issuing more temperate responses.

“The Secret Service had to escort the vice president of the United States to safety out of the Capitol building. Gunshots were fired. Tear gas was deployed in the Capitol Rotunda. People were killed. ... This was an assault on law. Attacking the Capitol was not patriotism; it was anarchy,” said Rev. John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio during his Sunday sermon, before going on to rally support for law enforcement, according to the Associated Press.

Miles away in Kentucky, Brian Gibson, pastor and founder of His Church, blamed the riot on antifa agitators, a conspiracy theory for which there is no evidence. 

“You don’t get 2 million people together without having some radicals in the crowd or some simple people in the crowd that you could lead anywhere, right?” he said, also greatly exaggerating the size of the crowd that day.

In other places, teachers in public schools that don’t rely on Christian textbooks are struggling to explain to their students the dynamics that allowed such violence to occur. In Chicago, high school teacher Raven Althimer discussed the harsh realities of the insurrection with her students, who are Black.

“They think of when they had Black Lives Matter over the summer, peacefully protesting, and were tear-gassed. People are literally storming the Capitol and nothing is happening to them,” Althimer told HuffPost. “One of my students said, ‘If 20 of us had done that, we all would have been dead.’ I said, ‘No, 20 of you wouldn’t have even gotten that close.’”