Dr. Jason Johnson

Professor of Political Science. Politics Editor for The Root. Latest Book: Political Consultants and Campaigns: One Day to Sell

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Black Guns Matter: My Day at the NRA Convention in the Age of Trump

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“You know that’s just a Klan rally without the hoods, right?”

“Bring Kevlar.”

“SMH.”

I went because the NRA is all about telling Americans that guns keep you safe from everything: crime, terrorists and those jack-booted, gun-hating liberal thugs in the government. Which should be right up my alley as a black person. On top of fearing random crime and crazy white vigilantes who shoot us for being black on a sunny day, black people have much more to fear from an aggressive government, in the form of killer cops, than just about anybody else in America. I wanted to see if the NRA was offering a gun for my type of real-world #SayHerName kinds of fears.

Of course, what I discovered is, there’s no gat for that. We are not the target audience for their gun play. Stoking white fear of imaginary terrorists, black thugs and immigrants—and keeping in place the guns and policies that support it—is what the NRA convention is all about.

I went to the convention on Friday; it was held at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, literally across the street from CNN headquarters. As I walked in with the mostly white, men-of-all-ages crowd, snide comments about “fake news” whizzed past my ears. Once inside, I saw that there were guns everywhere—free guns, guns from raffles, gun-training classes. Gun companies were handing out weapons as if they were T-shirts at a Hawks game. I thought President Barack Obama spent the last eight years taking everyone’s guns away? Maybe they hid these until they were sure he was out of office.

Almost all the people I talked to at the NRA convention said that they love guns but hate politics. They said that they enjoy and employ their guns safely and just want the government out of their way. Which almost makes sense, given that studies and history show that gun ownership and policy are driven by white racial resentment, not public safety or good government. However, I didn’t want to let things like facts and history deter me. The NRA is one of the largest, most powerful lobbying groups in America. There had to be a place for gun-comfortable or gun-curious black folks like myself in the NRA protection racket, right?

I spoke to Colion Noir about the connection between “gun culture” and racism, and why places like the NRA convention are perceived as being unwelcome for black folks, even those who are comfortable with guns. Noir is a lawyer, a gun advocate, a host on NRA TV, and one of the few black faces I saw on any poster or brochure at the whole convention.

“We’re talking about an issue that has been engrossed in politics. I’m not naive enough to think they [guns, politics, race] don’t crisscross, but I try to separate them. I have to,” Noir said.

He talked about how welcome he was at the convention and how many times, “both sides” refuse to talk to each other about issues relating to guns, race or shootings.

“I get pulled over all the time because I can’t stop speeding,” he joked. One time, Noir was driving with 10 guns in his car and got pulled over by a “redneck cop,” and they ended up having a great 20-minute conversation about gun culture.

“My experience isn’t everybody’s,” he acknowledged. Which is true—just ask John Crawford, Tamir Rice and Philando Castille, all of them black people shot and killed by police while having real or toy guns, despite being in open-carry states. But according to Noir, these shootings aren’t about institutional racism; they’re about ignorance, gun culture and a few bad cops.

I, along with a 30-something black man listening to our conversation, wasn’t trying to hear Noir’s “Gotta hear both sides” rhetoric, so I pushed back.

“The consequences for white ignorance aren’t the same as for black ignorance,” I said. “We have a legal system that has repeatedly said white fear, either out of ignorance of racism, is enough justification to employ lethal force, whether you’re a private citizen or a cop. It’s not the same for us.”

Noir, ever the lawyer, agreed that bad cops should be punished, but he quickly went back to arguing that we have to look at every shooting on a case-by-case basis rather than see an overarching problem. Which would work fine, if the entire convention weren’t selling the exact-opposite message.

Everywhere you go in the convention, you’re being told that the world is a dangerous place and you have to be ready. Even at the convention itself. I started up a conversation with a 50-something suburban-looking white guy named “Chris.” It was his fourth NRA convention, and we were talking about seeing Donald Trump Jr. walk through the building with not nearly as much security as you’d expect for the son of the 45th president.

“The Secret Service must be going nuts, right? With all these guns in here?” he said.

“I’m pretty sure Donald Trump Jr. is safe,” I responded. “Nobody here wants to take a shot at him. These are all responsible hunters, right?”

“Oh, I love the NRA, but I couldn’t bring myself to hunt,” Chris said. “My wife and I have three rescue dogs, and I just couldn’t bring myself to take … to take an animal’s life, you know? But I’m OK if other people want to hunt.”

Wait, what?

Despite Chris’ concerns, the NRA seems much more interested in the dangers posed by ISIS terrorists, illegal Mexican immigrants and “urban thugs” than a room full of non-background-checked men with enough weapons to save Morpheus and John Wick in one afternoon.

As much as I could find use for a metallic pen that doubles as a glass breaker or a pair of hearing aids so strong I could hear a deer piss on cotton, none of these toys makes me any safer.

At one display, a guy was selling an actual Gatling gun. I started thinking about those cable-news gun debates where you always hear the same argument:

Liberal person: Why do you need an AK-47 to hunt deer?

Conservative person: Have you ever seen a deer hopped up on PCP?

(OK, I made that part up; cable networks gave up having actual gun debates years ago.)

I’m thinking, who in the hell needs a Gatling gun? For a second I thought maybe it was just for display, like a sword on the wall or old cannons as lawn decorations. “Nope, it’s real; it actually works,” the dealer said.

I’m all in favor of gun ownership, but unless you’re planning on mowing down a group of attacking Zulu warriors, who in his or her right mind needs to drop $47,000 on a functioning Gatling gun? For that much money, I could just buy a nice car and run somebody down in the street.

Moreover, do I really want that person as my neighbor? What if he or she confuses a group of brown kids at a pool party with burglars? Let’s not forget that for years the Gatling gun was used by British invaders in Africa because the weapon was deemed too terrifying and brutal to use against Europeans. Selling this weapon is like selling Zyklon B: Yes, it’s technically a pesticide, but we all know the racial history of how it was really used.

The monetization of the racialized fear at the NRA is perfectly encapsulated in the biggest rollout of the weekend: the NRA’s Carry Guard insurance program. For just $31 a month, when catching these hands isn’t enough, Carry Guard provides legal coverage to individuals who catch a case after shooting someone in “self-defense.” Commercials for Carry Guard are a supercut of horrible crimes, from convenience stores to roadside stops (with mostly white victims), where shooting your way out of it is the only option. The program covers 20 percent of your legal costs up front and anywhere from $150,000 to $1 million in fees if you’re found innocent or the case is dropped.

You’d think this would be a great program for Juwan Alexander Plummer, the 19-year-old from Detroit who shot two cops last week, fearing that they were burglars. Or, even better, Florida’s Marissa Alexander, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot at her abusive husband. Or nah. The NRA isn’t offering plans targeted at black ladies’ fears and safety.

Massad Ayoob, a well-known gun instructor and advocate, says that the trial for George Zimmerman, and men who see themselves in his shoes, drove the market for gun insurance, and the NRA is cashing in. I guess, in theory, this racialized “Zimmerman insurance” could be Dick Cheney insurance if you accidentally shot a friend while hunting deer. However, it was pretty clear that the ads were aimed at shooting humans, not some overly aggressive black buck. Assuming that you see the difference. (See what I did right there?)

So if the NRA isn’t quite offering you the safety protection and training for black folks’ daily fears, who is? Well, there’s the recently formed (2015) National African-American Gun Association, whose membership has skyrocketed since Trump took office. But if you’re looking for something a little more around the way, you might want to call up the services of Maj Toure.

Toure is the founder of Black Guns Matter, an organization that teaches inner-city youths and families about gun culture, safety and protection. I talked to him after he did an interview with NRA TV in the main room of the convention. Toure knows that the program name is a bit provocative, but he’s trying to make a point.

“I’m not in the business of trying to convince someone else that my life matters,” says Toure. “Imma reach out to whomever and talk to people. If you’re from an urban area and wanna learn, let’s get it done.”

Toure is more concerned with black folks creating safety for themselves, by themselves, since it’s pretty clear that no one else really is. When I asked him how he was treated at his first NRA convention, he was mostly positive.

“I get tons of support here,” he said. “People say some slick shit on social media, but whatever; I have work to do.”

How convenient. In the end, the NRA convention was not a Ku Klux Klan rally without the hoods; it was something equally disturbing but much less obvious. It was all of the ridiculous, cognitively dissonant ways that race, guns and American policy intersect. A convention where people of color walk around freely buying guns from people who would justify shooting them out of fear in any other space. A world where a relatively pro-gun person like myself doesn’t see my image or my concerns reflected in any commercials or merchandise. A world where gun advocacy means that some lives matter more than others and some don’t matter at all.

In other words, the NRA convention was a lot like America: at one point familiar, but in so many other ways making it clear that there’s no real space for people who look, sound and live like me.

This article originally appeared online at The Root.

The Root: In Search of Pastor Darrell Scott and the Church of Donald Trump

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I went to church in search of Donald Trump.

Now, a big black church outside of downtown Cleveland is not the place you would expect to find a 69-year-old billionaire, but I was looking for the next-best thing: Pastor Darrell Scott.

Scott, pastor of the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland, burst onto the political scene last November when he pulled together a group of black pastors who were supposed to endorse Trump for president. He’s been met with a lot of skepticism, criticism and a lot of side eye. However, I honestly wanted to know, why would an African-American pastor with an African-American church be such a strong Trump supporter? His answers were surprising and disappointing, and on the whole contradictory. Which may explain a lot about what Trump’s appeal is to a certain segment of black voters.

Pastor Who?

To understand Scott, you have to understand Cleveland. I have lived in Cleveland, on and off, for the last 10 years and have seen the city go through a lot of change. From 2004 to 2016, Cleveland has gone from being the poorest big city in America to losing LeBron (and getting him back) to preparing to host the most important Republican convention in a century. But in all of my time working, living and socializing in Cleveland, I had never once heard of Pastor Darrell Scott or the New Spirit Revival Center.

This isn’t a reflection of my personal relationship with the church; it’s more a reflection of Scott’s status contrasted with his high-profile gig as “pastor for the Church of Trump.” There are big-time pastors who are political players in Cleveland, regularly engaging in community activism, hosting candidate forums and tacitly endorsing candidates for office. There’s the Rev. Jawanza Colvin at Olivet Baptist Church, where Oprah Winfrey occasionally visits and then-Sen. Barack Obama attended service while on the campaign trail.
There’s Pastor R.A. Vernon of the Word Church, whose daughter was on MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen and whose church boasts an ice-skating rink and an indoor soccer field for members. Scott’s church doesn’t roll off the lips of the half-dozen activists, politicos and journalists I talked to about powerful black clergy in Cleveland. When I asked about Scott and his endorsement of Trump, the response (once people became aware of who he was) was almost universally negative.

“This is all about the money and getting next to Trump,” said Stephanie Howse, an Ohio state representative. “Just last year, his wife was on a reality show [Editor’s note: the quickly canceled Preach on Lifetime]. He’s trying to get famous and be on the come-up. … If he really cared so much about politics, where has he been on local issues, where he could make a much greater impact?”

Started From the Bottom

In the 1980s, Scott was an addict and a drug dealer who went by the street name “Coddy” (or “Cotty,” in a Cleveland accent). Scott’s and his wife’s pasts as addicts are a key part of their ministry and part of what initially brought them to their relationship with Christ. But none of that explains what connects him to a billionaire businessman who’s been at the forefront of riots and protests and expressed hostility toward African Americans in almost every speech.

I attended Scott’s church for a week right after his endorsement of Trump and talked to parishioners and community members along the way. New Spirit Revival is located on Mayfield Road, a long stretch of road that goes from the suburbs to Case Western University to the city. The church is nestled among empty car dealerships, derelict homes and a Starbucks that looks as if it tried to gentrify 10 years too soon.

Scott himself is handsome, well dressed and a bit rough around the edges. He bears a striking resemblance to a 40-something Lloyd Banks and spits fire from the podium with the theatrics of most big-city black preachers.

Scott’s first sermon after endorsing Trump was one part self-aggrandizing revival and another part self-interview. Like many pastors, he portrayed himself as a man of God being attacked by haters and heathens. He railed against the “liberal media.”

“If I was Muslim, if I was homosexual, the media wouldn’t have a problem with what I was saying,” Scott said.

He railed against other ministers, like Paul Morton and Joseph Walker, for being jealous of his “five year” relationship with Trump. For the most part, the congregation of about 200 seemed more driven by loyalty to Scott than by any particular love for the Republican front-runner.

With a focus on money, something typical of many prosperity ministers, Scott spoke a lot about Trump’s wealth and was almost giddy talking about flying on Trump’s private jet and the gold-plated seat belts he got to buckle.

After the requisite hoots and amens, he essentially began to interview himself, asking questions and then answering them for the crowd.

Why did you meet Donald Trump? What did you talk about?

“We talked black stuff! We nailed him to the wall for two hours and I was the chief nailer!”

What will Donald Trump actually do for black voters?

“Trump asked us for a list of community programs that we were doing here in the city. He said once he becomes president, he’ll take every one of them national!”

Are you telling all African Americans to vote for Trump?

“You all know me. I can’t tell you where to get your hair done; how am I gonna tell you who to vote for? Unless Jesus Christ is on the ballot.”

What about the Black Lives Matter protester beaten up at a Trump rally while he encouraged it?

“Trump told us he’d look into it. But he said, what do you think would happen if somebody came into one of your church services trying to disrupt everything?”

After which Scott laughed and implied that he knew New Spirit Revival would beat down anyone who tried to disrupt one of his sermons, and the church agreed.

Contradictions

As open as he was with his congregation, he was much less so with the press. I was given the runaround when I tried to get an interview with Scott. It’s not that his media schedule is packed; it’s that he’s very selective. He has all but avoided black media, notoriously refusing to be interviewed by Roland Martin or urban-radio hosts, preferring instead to go on Fox News or morning debate panels on CNN.

When I finally managed to get an interview with Scott, I was guest-hosting the Michael Smerconish program on SiriusXM radio.

When I asked Scott what was the difference between Donald Trump and Donald Sterling (both have said racist things, both have been sued for racial discrimination, and both have media power and have made a few select black men wealthy), Scott said, “Trump is just judged differently,” and went on to say that he knew plenty of black pastors who like Donald Sterling.

When I asked him how Donald Trump could truly connect with black voters, given his words and violence at his rallies, the pastor revealed as much about his attitudes as he did about Trump.

“He’s a 69-year-old rich white man from upstate New York. [Editor’s note: Trump was born in the New York City borough of Queens.] He’s not going to turn hat backward, sag his jeans and flash gang signs while he puts out a rap video with Jay Z,” said Scott, the assumption being that gang signs, baggy jeans and rap videos are what’s necessary to get black votes.

When I pushed back, pointing out that Barack Obama never did anything like that while running for office (let alone Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio or anyone else), he claimed that he was just using an example. The issue I found, though, is that Scott, even when pressed, never seemed to have a real explanation as to why Trump was the best option for his congregation, or black voters in general. When I asked him why Trump was better for African-American Christians than Mike Huckabee, a minister, or Rick Santorum, his answer was, “They haven’t reached out to me.”

When I asked him how he reconciles being a pastor with endorsing a candidate who advocates refusing to allow immigrants into the United States based on their faith, he threw out some GOP talking points that Trump was only supporting a “temporary” ban on Muslims coming into the U.S. In other words, after spending time at Darrell Scott’s church and having a pleasant, lengthy interview with him, I didn’t find much depth to his reasons for supporting Trump, as opposed to any other Republican or Democrat. And even as Trump’s rhetoric and campaign rallies have become more and more violent, Scott has still refused to condemn those actions or to explain how a man who speaks violence to those who disagree with him lines up with a faith that encourages tolerance and loving one’s enemies.

Not About Politics

All of this plays into the narrative that Scott’s actions are more about raising his profile and financial gain than concern about politics, his faith or his flock. It would be one thing if Scott were a conservative, but he’s worked to elect Democratic mayors in Cleveland for years. At the same time, when Cleveland pastors rallied at the Cuyahoga County Courthouse on the one-year anniversary of Tamir Rice’s death, Scott was nowhere to be seen. He was at a Trump rally in Georgia. Maybe that’s all we need to know about his politics and priorities.

After all, it’s hard to ignore how profitable this newfound association with Trump could be for Scott and his church. There are millions of dollars in catering, housing and transportation contracts linked to the GOP convention in Cleveland, and some of those could certainly be funneled toward Scott now that Trump is a big GOP player. Further, it’s obvious that Scott and his wife have television aspirations (reality or otherwise), and being a Trump surrogate certainly gets Scott into meetings he couldn’t pull last year.

Darrell Scott isn’t the first African-American preacher to attach himself to a Republican candidate whose positions most black people disagree with. Rand Paul, Huckabee and others have trotted out black pastors as a way to signify to black and white voters that they’re not racist. (Remember how close T.D. Jakes was with George W. Bush?) Nor is Darrell Scott the first African-American pastor who might reap financial benefits from attaching himself to a political candidate of either party.

However, he may be about to take home the trophy for the biggest political come-up of 2016. To go from being overlooked and ignored by your own local news to flying around with Donald Trump and appearing on CNN and Fox News is quite an accomplishment. You just hope that at some point he can reconcile his “personal” decisions with the impact that a Trump presidency would have on his congregation, if not on black people as a whole. But he didn’t seem all that concerned about the contradiction.

As Scott said during that same sermon in which he answered his own questions regarding Trump: “If you’re going to lie to me, at least lie to me about something I want to hear.”

With that kind of attitude, he might be exactly what Donald Trump needs to win the White House.

This article originally appeared online at The Root.

NBC BLK: Is The Tamir Rice Case Going the Way of Ferguson?

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America has a creepy almost NASCAR crash like obsession with “The Next Ferguson”.

No slight to Baltimore, but the idea of a sleepy Midwestern town going up in flames over racial abuse and protests shakes America more to the core than unrest in a big mid-Atlantic city known (fairly or not) for crime and dysfunction.

In my conversations with people in Charleston, Oklahoma City and Cleveland over the last year about police abuse of African Americans, at some point someone will say, “But hey, we’re no Ferguson.” I get what they mean: Ferguson is defined by weeks of rioting and violent circumstances that no one believes will happen in their neighborhood.

However, riots are a reductionist view of what happened in Ferguson. It was the racism, stunted community discussion and corrupt local prosecutors that really define what happened in Ferguson. With Cleveland Prosecutor Timothy McGinty announcing there will be no indictment in the Tamir Rice case, whether they like it or not, Cleveland may be following the same dangerous path as Ferguson, Missouri.

The shootings of Mike Brown and Tamir Rice both include police officers of questionable competence who’d been fired from previous suburban jobs before moving to the big city. Both cases ultimately turned on the behavior of country prosecutors who consistently demonstrated favoritism and partial leanings towards the officers they were tasked with prosecuting.

In Cleveland, prosecutor Timothy McGinty subpoenaed Officer Timothy Loehmann and his partner Officer Frank Garmback to testify. However both officers decided to submit written statements, which the prosecutor accepted, instead of demanding Loehmann comply with the court order. Which is pretty much the same racism, arrogance and resistance we saw from the Ferguson police when they released Darren Wilson’s shooting statement with so many redacted sections that it looked like morse code.

Some parts of Officer Loehmann’s statement are clearly contradicted by the video of the Tamir Rice shooting:

The car’s antilock brake rumbled as car slid to a stop. As car is slid, I started to open the door and yelled continuously “show me your hands” as loud as I could. Officer Garmback was also yelling “show me your hands” …

I observed the suspect pulling the gun out of his waistband with his elbow coming up. Officer Gramback and I were still yelling “show me your hands” with his hands pulling the gun out and his elbows coming up, I knew it was a gun and it was coming out.

You don’t have to be an expert on CSI to see that video of the shooting and Loehmann’s version of events don’t match up. It’s pretty hard to believe that Loehmann and Gramback yelled audible and understandable warnings to Tamir Rice when the time between the officers arriving on the scene and the shooting was about 4 seconds.

What’s worse, allowing this statement to be read to the jury is something that by all accounts will make it more difficult to get an indictment. However we saw the same racist misconduct when Robert McCulloch gave the Ferguson grand jury false information knowing full well it would damage any case against Darren Wilson. In both cases it’s questionable as to whether an indictment was actually asked for by the prosecutor.

Unfortunately there are even sadder and more distressing similarities between Cleveland and Ferguson. Both communities seem incapable of having or maintaining discussions of not only these high profile shootings but the causes of the community rifts that led to the deaths.

In Ferguson this was epitomized by the “I Love Ferguson” movement, while well intentioned, it was a passive aggressive silencing of any real discussion of the community’s ills, highlighted by “community” meetings that included few if any African American town residents.

In Cleveland that same attitude is being perpetuated by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, with equally good intentions but equally distressing results. On December 1, the same day that Loehmann’s statement was released, the Plain Dealer announced that they were officially shutting down all online comments sections on any stories written about Tamir Rice. The reason:

The simple answer is that we don’t fancy our website as a place of hate, and the Tamir Rice story has been a magnet for haters… — The Cleveland Plain Dealer

Essentially the Plain Dealer abdicated its role as community news source and discussion forum because a bunch of bigots want to spoil the party. This specious notion that if we just don’t talk about race, somehow all the problems will disappear. Even if history says the opposite usually happens.

I, like many Americans hoped that Timothy Loehmann would have to stand trial and be forced to explain his actions under the full scrutiny of the law and a jury of his (and Tamir’s) peers. Unfortunately that will not happen.

From compromised prosecutors, to impotent leadership, to lack of community discussion, Cleveland is following all of the bad steps to what happened in Ferguson Missouri. A constantly silenced and marginalized community can only be silent so long.

For all of the times I’ve heard people say, “This [fill in the blank city] won’t be another Ferguson,” Cleveland is doing the best impression I’ve seen so far, and the end results could be much worse.

This article originally appeared online at NBC BLK.

WCPN: Jason Johnson on Tamir Rice, Mike Brown and Eric Garner

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On WCPN’s The Sound of Ideas, Hiram College professor Jason Johnson participated in a roundtable discussion of “Police and the Black Community.”

The unrest over the deadly shootings by police of a man in Ferguson, Missouri and a child in Cleveland have exposed a long simmering distrust of police by some in the black community. Earlier this week President Obama called for unity in arriving at a solution when he said, “we can build confidence and we can build trust but it’s not going to happen overnight and it’s not going to result from a conversation over a table in Washington.” Let’s begin with a conversation over a table here in Cleveland.

RA Washington is the owner of Guide to Kulchur and an community activist in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood.
Blaine Griffin is the Executive Director of the Community Relations Board of Cleveland
Dr. Jason Johnson is a professor of political science at Hiram College.
Alice Ragland is an organizer with Puncture the Silence.
Joe Worthy is Ohio Director of Youth Leadership & Organizing for the Children’s Defense Fund and lead organizer for the New Abolitionists Association.
Eva Barrett, New Abolitionists Association.
Ron Wynne, New Abolitionists Association.